Today, we’re excited to announce an upcoming set of changes rolling out over the coming months to enable people to express even more within 140 characters. These changes will allow for richer public conversations that are easier to follow on Twitter, and ensure people can attach extra elements, media, and content to Tweets without sacrificing the characters they have to share their view.
- Replies: @names that auto-populate at the start of a reply Tweet will not count towards the character limit (but new non-reply Tweets starting with a @mention will count, as will @mentions added explicitly by the user in the body of the Tweet). Additionally, new Tweets that begin with a username will no longer have to use the ”.@” convention in order to have those Tweets reach all of their followers.
- Media attachments: A URL at the end of Tweets generated from attaching photos, a video, GIF, poll, Quote Tweet, or DM deep link will also not count towards the character limit (URLs typed or pasted inside the Tweet will be counted towards the character limit as they do today).
Exciting? It’s definitely a change we’ve all been expecting for some time now but is it for the better?
The removal of replied-to usernames from the tweet count makes perfect sense to me. As does fixing the hack of “.@” so often used. What concerns me however is no longer counting media attachments.
Get ready for your timeline to be inundated with media. Every PR firm and social media manager will be salivating over this one. Now every tweet can be accompanied with more words and imagery to further help their tweets scream for attention.
Good or bad? What’s your thoughts?