Over the past decade, Twitter has evolved from a 140-character text message to a platform of creative expression featuring photos, videos, hashtags, GIFs, etc. The progress continues, the latest change is to make tweeting even more flexible by changing how it counts characters. Twitter is exempting @names in replies, media attachments such as photos, GIFs, videos and polls from the 140 character limit. The new limit has officially come into limit.
“Say more about what's happening! Rolling out now: photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and Quote Tweets no longer count toward your 140 characters. — Twitter (@twitter) September 19, 2016,” a tweet said.
Lately, Twitter has been trying to surge its user base. The changes in character limit are one move Twitter adopted to make it appealing to the users.
The announcement first came in May this year. "This is the most notable change we’ve made in recent times around conversation in particular, and around giving people the full expressiveness of the 140 characters," Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told The Verge in May. Twitter expects to increase the engagement between people due to this change. Dorsey praised the 140 character limit of as a “beautiful constraint”. The constraint makes people more creative in expressing their thoughts, enhances brevity in the delivery of message and speed.
Meanwhile, Twitter also has announced its plans to lay off some employees of its Bengaluru center. It is also halting the engineering works at Bengaluru. While at a report by Indian Express confirms that only the employees part of ZipDial (an Indian mobile communications startup bought by Twitter last year) will be affected, another report by Business Standard said that is shutting down its Bengaluru development center. The reason cited is the falling revenue.
Twitter had witnessed a fall in revenue in the quarter ended in June 2016. The social media platform had only lesser advertiser demand. The revenue growth fell for the eighth straight quarter. Twitter is facing a large competition from players like Facebook.
