Twitter is testing allowing tweets to be expanded to 280 characters - double the existing limit - in the latest effort to boost flagging growth at the social network.
San Francisco-based Twitter said on 26th Sept 2017 that the new limit, a major shift for the messaging platform known for its 140-character tweets, aims to address “a major cause of frustration” for many users.
Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey fired off what may be one of the first expanded tweets.
“This is a small change, but a big move for us,” he wrote, calling the previous limit was an “arbitrary choice”.
Twitter planned to leave the old limit in place for tweets in Japanese, Chinese and Korean because internal data showed written characters in those languages packed plenty into the allotted space.
Twitter, which became a public company in 2013, has never reported a profit, even though it has built a loyal base of celebrities, journalists and political figures, including prolific tweeter US President Donald Trump.
In its most recent quarter, Twitter reported its base of monthly active users was unchanged at 328 million compared to the first three months of the year and up just five percent from a year earlier.
Its growth has failed to keep pace with social network leader Facebook, which has some two billion users, and Facebook-owned Instagram, with 800 million.
Twitter has been seeking to draw in users by offering more video, including live streaming of sporting events, aiming to broaden its appeal.
Reaction on Twitter was mixed, with some lobbying for the original cap and the pressure it applied to succinctly express thoughts.
Many others on Twitter welcomed the news and said raising the character cap was long overdue.
Some people already resort to long strings of rapid-fire tweets, known as “Twitter storms,” to string together lengthy comment.
The messaging platform reported a net loss of $116 million in the second quarter, slightly wider than its $107 million loss a year ago.
It remained an open question whether the new tweet limit would ignite the growth an engagement Twitter needs to compete in the fast-moving social media segment.
The move by Twitter could also be rendered moot by lifestyle changes brought about by trends in voice-commanded digital assistants and looking at the world through mixed-reality glasses, according to Gartner analysts.
