Tweet Limit Extended To 280 Characters For Everyone

After testing the 280-character limit with a few users, Twitter is officially rolling out the new character limit to all its users. The only exceptions will be for Twitter users in the Japanese, Korean, and Chinese languages, who can convey as much as double the amount of information in their tweets compared to characters in English and other languages.

In a blog post announcing the new official character limit, Aliza Rosen, Product Manager said:

During the first few days of the test many people Tweeted the full 280 limit because it was new and novel, but soon after behaviour normalised. We saw when people needed to use more than 140 characters, they Tweeted more easily and more often.

But importantly, people Tweeted below 140 most of the time and the brevity of Twitter remained.

The 280-character limit is still rolling out in phases and if your tweets are still limited to 140 characters, then fret not.

Back in 2016, Twitter chief Jack Dorsey was asked about the 140-character limit and its future, and he replied with a firm “It’s staying.” When Twitter had announced the test phase of the 280-character limit, Aliza Rosen, Product Manager in a blog post wrote:

We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter, so we’re doing something new: we’re going to try out a longer limit, 280 characters, in languages impacted by cramming (which is all except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean).

In the same post, she continued, “Also, in all markets, when people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people Tweeting – which is awesome!” This made it evident that Twitter was willing to reach out to more people by giving the iconic 140-character limit, something that was quintessential to Twitter’s growthfar and has been a part of the company’s identity since the very beginning.