Twitter @usernames no longer count toward the 140 character limit in replies

Twitter’s strict 140 character count has long been the social network’s greatest challenge for new users. When drafting up a post, Twitter forces users to keep things brief. That, or get creative in how they word their posts 2 sqz evrythg insd. A lot of this had to do with Twitter’s original intent of supporting Tweets by SMS, but those days are long gone. Just about everyone is using the official Twitter app or the myriad of great 3rd party options.

The biggest problem with Twitter’s character limit was when replying to other users’ tweets — or worse yet, multiple users — obliterating your character count just to keep everyone in the conversation. Starting today, all that changes. Twitter is finally removing the @usernames from within replies, allowing you to respond to as many people as you like and still keep all 140 characters. Tapping the reply bar will allow you to see who’s being included in the conversation and there’s even a handy menu you can use if you’d like to only reply to specific users in a thread.

It’s simple, easy, and let’s be honest, it’s a move Twitter should have made ages ago. Twitter says that they’ll continuing listening to user feedback in hopes of making Twitter easier for everyone.