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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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Coming soon to Twitter: More room to tweet

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NEW YORK — Twitter is making some big changes, at least in the context of 140 characters or fewer.

The social media service said Tuesday that in coming months, photos, videos and other media won’t count toward Twitter’s 140-character limit. Now, for example, when a user posts a photo, it counts for about 24 characters.

That means slightly more wordy tweets are on the way.

The change, announced Tuesday, is yet another attempt by the San Francisco company to make its messaging service easier to use, and to attract new users.

Twitter did not, as many had speculated in recent months, abolish its character limit. Nor are web links exempt from the 140-character limit, which was also rumored.

But replies to another user, which start with the “@” symbol and the user’s name, will not count against character limits. Names with the @ symbol in the middle of a tweet, however, will still count against the limit.

And people will be able to retweet and quote their own tweets.

In another change, any new tweet beginning with an @name will be seen by all followers. Previously, a tweet that started with a person’s handle did not become part of their feed. If a user wanted this to happen, they had to put a period before the @ symbol.

Confusing? Some users thought so.

Twitter has tried to keep all users happy, those for and against relaxing character limits, by sticking to the current count while allowing more freedom to express thoughts, or rants, through images and other media.

Above all, Twitter Inc. hopes that the changes will re-ignite user growth.

The company, which recently celebrated its 10th birthday, is dwarfed by its rival, Facebook. Its current number of users, about 310 million, trails even the professional networking service LinkedIn.

Facebook has 1.65 billion users. Even though many people are familiar with Twitter, at least that it exists, the company has been unable to convert them to active users.

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