Twitter to Expand Tweet’s 140-Character Limit to 10,000

Yoree Koh, reporting for the WSJ:

One of Twitter’s most beloved features is set to change: The company is planning to extend its 140-character limit to as many as 10,000, according to a person familiar with the matter.

In a tweet on Tuesday after the news spilled out, co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted a screenshot of text — 1,317 characters with spaces — explaining his thinking behind the expansion. “We’ve spent a lot of time observing what people are doing on Twitter, and we see them taking screenshots of text and tweeting it,” Mr. Dorsey wrote. “Instead, what if that text… was actually text? Text that could be searched. Text that could be highlighted. That’s more utility and power.” Despite the change, Mr. Dorsey said Twitter will “never lose that feeling” of speed, creativity and brevity.

This sounds like what I’ve been hoping they’d do: treat longer-than-140-character posts as an attachment type, like quoted tweets, images, etc.

★ Tuesday, 5 January 2016