If you’re a consistent Twitter user than you may have already noticed that it has doubled the number of characters in its tweets from 140 to 280, for all users of the service.
The 140-character limit has long been criticized as too difficult to utilize effectively by its users. Twitter reports that it spent a significant amount of time collecting and analyzing data from a test group and found that when users don’t have to fit their tweets into the 140-characters, they team to tweet moire often, which is the aspiration of Twitter. The challenge is that only 9 percent of tweets even hit the 140 character limit anyway.
For those who tweet regularly the familiar 140-character counter has been replaced by a small circular progress indicator. It won’t take you long to notice the change, and those of you who have linked other social channels with Twitter will also notice that your posts are not as likely to be truncated in Twitter.
It’s our bet that this will allow for more linking and hashtags, which of course are very important in engagement and digital reach, so kudos to Twitter… we’re looking forward to tweeting a compliment to you… and using 280 characters to do so!
