Why has Twitter doubled the character limit for tweets to 280?

Twitter has finally heeded to pleas of people who have more to say.

The microblogging website is updating its 140-character limit for tweets to 280 characters globally as per a post on its official blog.

The company ran a test on 280-character tweets in September that showed users spent less time editing their tweets and were less likely to abandon them.

Users posting tweets in languages including Japanese, Korean and Chinese, which do not face the issue of "cramming", will continue to have a limit of 140 characters, Twitter said.

As Asian languages have the capability to fit more thoughts into fewer characters, the limit still remains. For example, on an average the length of a tweet in Japanese is 15 characters.

In the blog post, Twitter mentioned that expanding the 140-character limit would ensure easier expression and higher frequency of tweeting.

“We saw when people needed to use more than 140 characters, they Tweeted more easily and more often. But importantly, people Tweeted below 140 most of the time and the brevity of Twitter remained,” said Twitter in a blog post.

A graph showing percentage of English tweets that are hitting the character limit with 140 and 280 characters (Source: Twitter Blog)

As per the company’s analysis, around 9 percent of tweets hit the character limit ceiling that was leading to “lots of time spent editing and even at times abandoning Tweets before sending”, hence the need to expand the character count, which reduced the problem to 1 percent of the tweets.

Twitter has ensured that people will not be bombarded with longer tweets in their timeline, as even with the 280-character limit, only 5 percent of tweets were longer than 14- characters and only 2 percent were over 190 characters.

Also, tweets with an image or a poll usually tend to have lesser number of characters.

The move also showed that Twitter, in general, received more engagements, likes, mentions and followers and people ended up spending more time on it online.

The company did not say when it would start allowing users to post 280-character tweets.

Users have criticised several other Twitter changes in recent years, including a non-chronological timeline, new ways of replying to tweets, replacing stars with hearts, circular profile photos, and a new font.

As usual Twitter users were the first to 'embrace' the raised character limit with their tweets. Here are some of the reactions:

finally I can write my PHD on twitter. #280characters

— Ekta Batra (@ekta_batra) November 8, 2017

The best bit about 280 is never having to shorten whilst, amidst, and amongst ever again — Tom Cowie (@tom_cowie) November 7, 2017

Now that we all have #280Characters, we expect your Twitter complaints about specific calls against your favorite teams to be calm, well-reasoned, and full of complete sentences. Thanks in advance for this positive step forward in basketball officiating-related discourse."

— NBA Referees (@OfficialNBARefs) November 7, 2017

I'd rather see a Twitterverse free of white supremacists, racists, sexists, and xenophobes than a Twitterverse of #280characters in tweets. — Matt (@nosoupforgeorge) November 7, 2017

Gah. Who has time to read all these 280 character tweets. My brain has a 140 character limit now.

— Michael Slezak (@MikeySlezak) November 7, 2017

'Extravagant': baroque, devilish, exorbitant, excessive, extreme, fancy, immoderate, inordinate, insane, intolerable, lavish, overdue, overextravagant, overmuch, overweening, plethoric, profligate, steep, stiff, spendthrift, thriftless, towering, unconscionable, undue, unmerciful — Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) November 7, 2017

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— birdsrightsactivist (@ProBirdRights) November 7, 2017

-280 character backlash -backlash against 280 character backlash -280 character backlash backlash backlash -muttering -acceptance — non-spooky name (@jonkudelka) November 7, 2017

All we wanted was an edit button. All we wanted was an edit button. All we wanted was an edit button. All we wanted was an edit button. All we wanted was an edit button. All we wanted was an edit button All we wanted was an edit button. #280characters

— NUFF (@nuffsaidNY) November 7, 2017

140 more chances for me to make a spelling error #280characters — maryy (@maryybush) November 8, 2017