Twitter is increasing its character limit from 280 to 4000
There is set to be further change at Twitter under the rule of Elon Musk, with the billionaire now suggesting that the word count could be set to rise a dramatic amount.
Obviously, ever since the artist formerly known as the world’s richest man has been ringing the changes ever since arriving at the bird website, and this latest change he’s proposing would be about the most drastic yet – increasing the word count from 280 characters to 4,000 in total.
That would mean that people can post huge amounts of text in their tweets, whereas now people are – mercifully on most counts – limited in what they can say.
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It’s not the first time this has happened, either.
If you remember a time long ago on Twitter, you’ll also remember that everything you wanted the whole world to know about had to be limited to just 140 characters.
It was a brave new world indeed when that was doubled to all for an extra 140 letters of expression.
Twitter started out as a ‘micro-blogging’ social media platform back in the day, begging the question of whether it can still be called that given the drastic enhancement in word space.
Like he tends to do, Musk decided to soft launch this proposed change on his own platform after being asked a question by someone.
They asked Musk whether it was ‘true that Twitter is set to increase the characters from 280 to 4,000?’.
In his typically understated fashion, the South African-born multibillionaire said just ‘yes’.
As ever, we might just have to take whatever bold proclamations he makes on Twitter with a pinch of salt, given that not all of it always comes true.
However, he has spoken in the past about increasing the letter limit on Twitter, telling another person not too long ago that it was ‘on the todo [sic] list’.
That was in reference to an increase to 1,000 characters, whereas now we’re talking about a jump up to 4,000, which is practically a Twitter version of War and Peace.
In terms of what Twitter is used for, this is a big deal, but in terms of what Elon has done so far, it’s just the latest thing.
In recent times, he’s said that people working for him needed to be ‘hardcore’ and prepared to work ‘long hours’ or leave the company.
He sacked then rehired loads of staff, as well as allowing Donald Trump back onto the platform – though he hasn’t tweeted yet – and reinstated and subsequently banned Kanye West again.
It’s going to be an interesting time at Twitter for a while now, you’d have to imagine.
Tom Wood