Twitter is in a bit of a precarious situation in its critical age as one of the top social networking sites. Back in August, they increased the character limit for the DM which made sense due to the fact that writing short private messages at a time hindered the conversation flow. It seems that they may extend the policy to one of the most iconic features of Twitter: The 140 character limit.
According to a report by Recode: “Twitter is building a new feature that will allow users to tweet things longer than the traditional 140 character limit, and the company is targeting a launch date towards the end of Q1.” This report links up well with another report posted by the same publication of a rumoured product by Twitter that will allow people to post content that is longer than the iconic 140 character limit.
This sort of development will be met with criticism from long time Twitter users who have praised the 140 character limit as a symbol of brevity that is idiosyncratic to the social network. From the company’s standpoint however, this could be a gateway for publishers to house content on Twitter which could save readers a few taps. No comment was made to justify the development hence its purpose is unclear at the time.
The last time Twitter made a drastic change to its core features is when they decided to replace the star button for favourites and renaming it to likes that was represented with a heart button. Twitter claimed this was to attract new users to its platform since other social networks including its very own Periscope use hearts extensively. In this case however, the possibility of seeing longer tweets on the timeline portrays an interesting time for Twitter as it seeks to reverse its growth slump so as to roar again in the social networking world.
