Each social media platform has its particularities. And perhaps one of the most particular is Twitter. Its 140 character limit has forced users to become direct, concise and most of all, learn to communicate better. But the paradigm is shifting and Twitter will allow longer direct messages as it announced that it will discard its 140 character limit.
You would expect that the increase wouldn’t be more than 10-20 characters but prepare to face serious contradiction. Twitter’s new character limit will be raised to 10,000. Such a figure is, for all intents and purposes, limitless.
This new character limit will be enforced in July and will only affect direct messages, Sachin Agarwal, Twitter’s DM product manager explains.
“You may be wondering what this means for the public side of Twitter. Nothing! Tweets will continue to be the 140 characters they are today.”
Agarwal made the announcement so as to aid developers in preparing for the change. API recommendations were even offered so as to ensure that the change will be made as seamlessly as possible.
Applications have to be slightly tweaked to be capable of receiving the direct messages exceeding 140 characters. If the tweaks aren’t done beforehand, users will only receive truncated versions of the direct message.
Luckily, the change isn’t as complicated as one would expect. App developers will only have to include “full_text=true” to their queries in order to receive full-text versions.
It remains to be seen whether additional modifications, such as layout modifications, will be required in order to support the longer messages.
This decision seems to reflect Twitters focus on meeting its users’ needs. Other social networks, such as Facebook and LinkedIn don’t have such text limits.
The new feature will, however, not involve unnecessary messages for those who don’t wish to receive them. By unchecking the option “receive direct messages from anyone”, users are able to opt out of the long DM system if they wish to do so.
Image Source: Mcafee Institute
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