We heard last week that Twitter was on the verge of rolling out changes to let you compose longer tweets, and today the microblogging giant made it official.
Announcing the changes in a tweet (naturally), the company said that starting Monday, photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and quote tweets will no longer count toward the 140-character limit.
So while the number of characters remains the same, you’ll now have a little more space to express yourself, especially if you’re one for adding media to your messages.
Say more about what’s happening! Rolling out now: photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and Quote Tweets no longer count toward your 140 characters. pic.twitter.com/I9pUC0NdZC
— Twitter (@twitter) September 19, 2016
The change was first announced by Twitter back in May, though at the time it declined to offer a specific date as to when the new system would roll out. “You can already do a lot in a Tweet, but we want you to be able to do even more,” the company said in its original post on the subject.
There’d been talk at the start of the year that the service might start allowing tweets of up to 10,000 characters – the length currently allowed for direct messages – though CEO Jack Dorsey soon killed off the rumor, insisting that the 140-character limit was here to stay.
Twitter users keen to post a longer message can only do so by splitting it across several tweets, or by tapping it out in another app, taking a screenshot, and posting that instead.
The latest Twitter changes land as the San Francisco company continues to look for ways to boost its user base, which has pretty much leveled off over the last 18 months and currently stands at around 313 million.
Responding to recent news reports that Wall Street analysts are expecting Twitter to be bought by a larger tech firm, the social media site said earlier this month that there were currently no bids on the table and that it’s main work for now is geared toward cutting costs.
