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In an update rolling out to Twitter across all platforms, the social network has announced that they’re now officially ready to do away with the 140 character limit… for direct messages. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Twitter actually announced they’d be doing just that all the way back in June. We’re not sure what the hold up was, but it’s only today that they’re finally ready to lift the requirement for everyone.
Twitter had long imposed an extremely restrictive 140 character limit when posting either publicly or directly to other users in private. It’s how they’ve always done things. The problem is it created a unique challenge to actually carry a longer conversation with users. With the growing popularity of messaging apps like WhatsApp and Snapchat, Twitter had to do something or miss out on a huge opportunity to keep users Tweeting from inside their social network. Facebook did the same thing. Eventually they launched a dedicated messaging app called Messenger and while we’re not sure if Twitter is on the same path, lifting the restriction to DM only users following you, it’s clear they’re taking messaging much more seriously now than ever.
Oh, and if you’re thinking this could be the beginning of the end for the 140 character limit in regular public tweets, get that out of your head right now. Twitter says nothing will change on that end, and that’s just the way they like it. We do too. To get the character limit lifted, you’ll need to update to the most recent version of the app.
[Twitter]
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