Twitter just tested doubling up its character limit for tweets from 140 to 280 to selected users worldwide.
According to Twitter’s Product Manager, Aliza Rosen, and Senior Software Engineer, Ikuhiro Ihara, they wanted every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter and what more better way to do that is to try out a longer limit, 280 characters, in all languages that are affected by cramming, except for Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.
They have noticed that a small percent of Tweets sent in Japanese have 140 characters (only 0.4%). But in English, a much higher percentage of Tweets have 140 characters (9%). Most Japanese Tweets are 15 characters while most English Tweets are 34. However, they have also mentioned that there may be an emotional attachment to 140-character limit since it’s something that has stayed on Twitter for a long time, but they tried it and saw the power of what it will do.
Twitter will keep us posted, so stay tuned!
Source: Twitter
