Twitter considers killing off 140-character and introduce 10000-character direct messages

 

Twitter is working on a product that will allow users to share content longer than 140 characters.The new service would allow the firm to compete with Facebook’s revamped notes features and blogging sites like Medium.
Interim CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey is spearheading the project, code-named ‘140 Plus,’ according to the Wall Street Journal.

It is is looking at different ways users can extend its signature 140-character limit, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company’s executives are also discussing changes to how the 140-character limit is measured, such as excluding links and user handles from the count, Re/code reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

It’s unclear what the product will look like, Re/code said.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Increasing the limit has been discussed at Twitter for years, more so in recent months under interim Chief Executive Jack Dorsey as the company looks to grow its user base, sources told Re/code.

Twitter shares were up 1 percent at $25.52 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Up to Monday’s close, the stock had fallen nearly 30 percent this year.

The company removed the 140-character limit from its direct messages last month.

The feature is rolling out globally, with Twitter saying the aim is to allow users to ‘express themselves’ more freely.

Direct Messages – also know as ‘DMs’ – are the private messaging aspect of the Twitter platform where users can communicate directly with one another away from the public area of the site.

The micro-blogging site’s co-founder and interim chief executive Jack Dorsey recently admitted the service was not doing well enough when it came to making the site better for users and attracting new interest.

The change was announced on Twitter’s developer community forum in June, but the site stressed that the update wouldn’t impact public tweets.

Twitter currently has about 300 million global users while rival social network Facebook has more than 1.4 billion.

Twitter confirmed that public tweets would continue to operate by the 140-character limit rule.

The site is aiming to compete with the likes of Facebook, WhatsApp and WeChat, which have invested heavily in their own messaging capabilities.

Sachin Agarwal, product manager for Direct Messages at the firm, said: ‘I think that you will definitely see folks being more expressive in general.

‘I think in the past you might have felt constricted by 140 characters and so you had to cut out a word here or there, but now you end up with these longer messages where people are really able to get their point across and do it in a more funny way.

‘They can add more emojis, more photos, things like that – which just let them be a little more richer in their expression.’

Mr Agarwal said the aim was to make Twitter feel more like a ‘casual chatting platform’ as it looked to increase its appeal.

‘Messaging is very familiar to users; we’ve been using messaging in a number of ways for years, and we think it’s just a really great compliment to the public side of Twitter,’ he said.

‘So, what we want is to create is this experience where you can go back and forth between the public Twitter content and your private conversation really seamlessly and in an enjoyable way.’

Although Twitter hasn’t – and seemingly doesn’t have any plans – to reduce the character limit on public tweets, it has made sharing content easier this year.

For example, when a user wants to quote a tweet, they can now do so without using up any of their character limit because the tweet is embedded in the post.

Images, GIFs, Vines, videos and audio files can also be embedded – in both public and private tweets.