Those of you that get genius-attack now and then that you feel itched to share with the world, Twitter always seem limiting with its 140 character limit per tweet made. Some resort to innovativeness like taking a picture of the long text strings or numbering your tweets as per their 140 characters limit.
Well, Twitter Inc. might soon loosen up a bit with its 140 character limit. That is not to say the social media is going to do away with its trademark 140 character limit, but it is not going to count links and pictures as part of that 140 characters limit.
Publishers know too well, how limiting it can get when you’re trying to promote your publication on Twitter. You must fit the link to the article (unshortened links eat more space), some verbiage and a picture; all within that 140 character limit. Currently, links eat up 23 characters; that is even after Twitter has automatically shortened them.
Soon, you will have more room to work with as the 140 character limit will only apply to text, not the pictures and links within the tweet. This news was apparently disclosed to Bloomberg by a confidential source close to the company; the said person did not want to be revealed as Twitter has not yet made the information public. The informant says these changes could be available as soon as in two weeks’ time.
Twitter first started off back in 2006, back when smartphones were not the common means for mobile communications and SMS texting was the common way for text-based communications. So naturally, Twitter being the new texting platform built its structure around the SMS platform thus adopting the 140 character limit of an SMS, and it became its trademark.
With the smartphones proliferations, there has been pressure for Twitter to move away from its 140 character limit, but the company always resists such move. Mainly because it has become its trademark, and differentiates it from other social network platforms out there.