Twitter Will No Longer Include Pictures And Links In Your 140 Characters

Bloomberg – Twitter Inc. is making a major shift in how it counts characters in Tweets, giving users more freedom to compose longer messages. The social media company will soon stop counting photos and links as part of its 140-character limit for messages, according to a person familiar with the matter. The change could happen in the next two weeks, said the person who asked not to be named because the decision isn’t yet public. Links currently take up 23 characters, even after Twitter automatically shortens them. The company declined to comment. It’s a step in a larger plan to give users more flexibility on the site. Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said in January that the company was looking for new ways to display text on Twitter, and would experiment based on how people use the service. For example, some people tweet screenshots of longer text in articles, or send many tweets one after the other to tell a story. Twitter’s 140-character limit was originally adopted because it was a way to send Tweets while fitting all the information within a mobile text message — a common way for sending Tweets when the service debuted in 2006, before the proliferation of smartphones. The company earlier this year considered raising the limit to as many as 10,000 characters. But the quick, concise nature of Tweets has helped set the site apart from the competition. Executives have spent the last few months emphasizing how Twitter is a destination for live events and discussion. Removing the character requirement for links and photos may encourage users to add more media to their posts.

Bittersweet moment here for Twitter addicts like myself. For a number of reasons. First off, this is the first step to removing the character limit completely. The 10,000 character rule has been rumored for a while and I’ve written about it multiple times telling you how awful it is. Not just from a social media perspective, but just life in general. Encourage people to babble on and on and on is the last thing society needs. If you cant live your life in 140 characters or less, get off my planet.

But that being said, this was the one change that needed to happen. Having links and pictures eating up my 140 was cramping my steelo. I can express the fuck out of myself in 140 characters. But 119? Christ almighty Twitter, I’m not a Monk. I need a little bit of wiggle room communicating. But I will admit, part of me will miss it. Its another bittersweet part of this change. I always got a little rush when I nailed a tweet at exactly 140 characters. When you’re like 3/4 of the way through a joke and you have about 29 characters left and you know its gonna come right down to that final word. You hit that final letter or period and see that red 0 and you’re gold. EXHILARATING. Or when you gotta change some you’s to u’s, work in some abbreviations, or have to scrap it and complete rearrange the whole tweet to fit that 140. Its like a labor of love. This change needed to happen but we’ll always remember the real 140 character struggle.

Now the next update they need to make since they are a bunch of fucking idiots at Twitter and are always late in reacting to their fans is allowing you to attach pictures when you quote a tweet. Why the fuck does that tweet take the place of a picture? What if I want to respond to that tweet publicly by using a picture? Christ almighty get out of your own way twitter.