On 26 September, Twitter announced that it will double its character limit from 140 to 280. The increased limit will initially be rolled out to a randomly selected trial group of tweeters from all over the world.

We expected (and ❤️!) all the snark & critique for #280characters. Comes with the job. What matters now is we clearly show why this change is important, and prove to you all it’s better. Give us some time to learn and confirm (or challenge!) our ideas. https://t.co/qJrzzIluMw

— jack (@jack) September 27, 2017

Why, you ask?

Twitter’s 140-character limit has remained controversial since its inception in 2006. Over the years innovations have improved usability including @names, pictures and URLs not counting in the character limit.

So, why change it now?

According to Twitter, when it comes to tweeting, not all languages are created equal.

Chinese, Japanese and Korean users can convey more information in shorter tweets thanks to the pithiness of their languages. Only 0.4% of Japanese tweets hit the 140-character limit, while nine per cent of English tweets do.

By doubling its character limit, Twitter intends to extend the same opportunity for verbosity to all nationalities.

Why was it 140 in the first place?

Although many tweeters are emotionally attached to the now-iconic 140-character limit, it was originally an arbitrary choice. When Twitter began in 2006, posts were made via text which, at the time, had a character limit of 160. The extra 20 characters was set aside to include the sender’s username.

With the iPhone debuting the following year, the imposed limit was soon superfluous, but Twitter has stuck with the cap, and even become iconic for its brevity.

What this means for business

Crafting 140-character posts may encourage concise content, but sometimes it just isn’t possible to convey meaning in so small a space. Precious time is often wasted trimming posts down to size, and vital content or meaning can be lost in the process.

For businesses, an increased character limit of 280 means less time whittling down posts and more time writing what you want to say first go. It also leaves space for more and longer #hashtags.

Read more: Hashtag Hacks: Intro to hashtags

As yet, Twitter has not announced when, or if, the ability to post 280-character tweets will be rolled out to all users. Some even suspect that the longer tweet format will be a paid feature, with the site long struggling to make a profit.

Some users have already found a work-around to get 280 characters for any account by installing a Chrome extension.

Hello world, this is a large Tweet. This tweet has 280 characters instead of the regular and boring 140, and it’s going to change everything. One more thing: you can do this yourself with a userscript in Chrome, it’s really simple to do 🙂

— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) September 27, 2017

The reaction

As with all change this announcement has been met with a mixture of outrage, excitement and indifference.

Twitter purists say the 140-character limit is one of the best things about the service, setting it apart from other social media platforms. Early accounts with 280 characters are experimenting with the function, hitting a mix of useful and annoying posts.

Pro-280 folks say this has been a long time coming and will simply result in fewer post-threads, where users split up long messages into two or more tweets.

The take-home

Twitter is still an excellent micro-blogging service used by millions of people worldwide. Will a doubled word limit bring the sky crashing down on us? No. Does it mean you can express yourself and your business more easily? Yes, indeed it does.