Twitter’s 140 character tweets are not going away, but tweets may still be evolving from how they’re currently being displayed in people’s timelines.
Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey recently made some press appearances celebrating the 10th anniversary of the social network. The question on everyone’s minds was what’s going on with the 140 character limit on tweets.
During an appearance on the Today Show, Dorsey addressed the question about the 140 character limit by stating:
“It’s staying… It’s a good constraint for us, and it allows for of-the-moment brevity.”
Dorsey went on to say that things are still changing within Twitter, “a lot” in fact, as there will always be efforts made to make Twitter better. He reiterated 140 characters are staying, but didn’t elaborate on the changes that were alluded too.
So, 140 character tweets are staying, but technically they were never completely going away in the first place. When the plan was announced to up the tweet limit to 10,000 characters, it was never Twitter’s intention to display article-sized tweets in people’s timelines.
The original idea was to display a snippet of the tweet in the timeline, where people can click through to read more if they choose to. Dorsey’s recent statements suggest that changes are in the works, which could mean that tweets with embeddable/expandable text are still on the way.
As far as your timeline is concerned, you can rest assured you won’t see individual tweets exceeding 140 characters any time soon.
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