Twitter CEO and owner Elon Musk has confirmed that the current 280-character limit will soon be replaced by a new one — and it's going to change the way Twitter functions entirely.
According to Musk, Twitter will allow people to tweet messages that are as long as 4,000 characters, a huge increase. But so far it isn't clear when the change will be made or if it will be limited to people who pay for Twitter's premium option, Twitter Blue.
The news hasn't been confirmed by Twitter itself but rather, as is so often the case right now, via Musk's personal Twitter account. It came via a reply to a user that simply asked "is it true that Twitter is set to increase the characters from 280 to 4,000?" The response?
"Yes."
That response hasn't been universally well received, however. As some have already pointed out in the replies to the tweet, 4,000 characters is very long. One commenter said that 4,000-character-long tweets are "an essay, not a tweet."
It's clear that allowing such long tweets could change the way that people use Twitter, perhaps making it more similar to other social networks like Meta's Facebook. No longer will brevity be required, with long rambling posts allowed for the first time since Twitter's launch.
The 280-character limit is already twice that of the Twitter that launched, of course. That doubling of the limit back in 2017 was also poorly received by many at the time before being accepted, perhaps pointing to a similar situation with this impending change.
The original 140-character limit was based on the way Twitter worked — initially via SMS rather than an app — but that limitation hasn't been in place for years.
All eyes will be on Twitter and Musk to see how the new limit will be implemented and who will have access to it.
