If you weren’t one of the chosen users selected to take part in the 280 character limit expansion Twitter began testing in September, good news: the social media giant announced Tuesday that expansion is being rolled out for everyone.
The only exceptions are people who tweet in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean because “these languages have always been able to say more with their Tweets because of the density of their writing systems.”
The switch marks a landmark change for the San Francisco-based company, which has been tethered to its 140 character max since its launch in 2006. Its 330 million monthly active users will have access to the new threshold by Tuesday night.
Twitter says it found that users with the longer limit experienced “more engagement (Likes, Retweets, @mentions), got more followers, and spent more time on Twitter” from their longer tweets. But, overall, it found that having a higher character limit didn’t necessarily lead to longer tweets overall.
“We saw when people needed to use more than 140 characters, they Tweeted more easily and more often. But importantly, people Tweeted below 140 most of the time and the brevity of Twitter remained,” Twitter product manager Aliza Rosen wrote in a blog post.
She added that “only 5 percent of Tweets sent were longer than 140 characters and only 2 percent were over 190 characters” during the test.
Brevity preserved or not, it seems Twitter users were largely ‘meh’ about the changes. Some mocked the implications for long-winded users. Others noted it comes while users still want more to be done about harassment and hate speech. Others noted that now Trump has 280 characters too. Others just had fun lamenting the end of what we’ll call classic Twitter. Or as writer Britt Hayes put it, “what is this Infinity War.”
Read on for a sampling.
I only need this many characters to tell you that 280 character Tweets are a bad idea.
— Eamon Javers (@EamonJavers) November 7, 2017
https://twitter.com/tomtomorrow/status/928008488697171970
https://twitter.com/MissBrittHayes/status/928006851165335560
Self-imposing a 140-character limit, despite now having 280 characters, will be the new vinyl.
— Stig Abell (@StigAbell) November 7, 2017
Well, it's official. I like you, now have 280 characters to play with. I will not abuse this privilege other than this one time in which I'm trying very hard to reach 280 characters just to prove that I totally have 280 characters. Thank you for all you do, and God bless America.
— Ben Howe (@BenHowe) November 7, 2017
The commander-in-chief is about to get 280 characters. Be ready.
— JT (Panthers/Noles: 0-5) (@Jaberuski) November 7, 2017
TWITLER WHERE. IS MY 280 CHARACTERS
I️ WANT TO DO ;
BFDOODKRK😷🎊😷👌🏽🚨🎊😃👨🏻NJEJDID🎓🎓🤓B🗣👨🏼🌾👨🏼🌾👡👙🐳🐂🐓NAKOFOR🍠 ,
BUT LONGER !!! TO DAY !!
— Jukebox the Ghost (@JukeboxtheGhost) November 7, 2017
Patiently waiting for everyone who’s complaining about 280 characters to voluntarily limit themselves to 140.
— Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox) November 7, 2017
https://twitter.com/Abid_ism/status/928009924994531330
https://twitter.com/DVATW/status/928005903793651712
On the other hand, some users celebrated the change.
In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories. *DUN DUN*
— 𝐋𝐀𝐖 & 𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐑 (@lawandordertv) November 7, 2017
“LANAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” #ArcherFXX #280characters
— Archer (@archerfxx) November 7, 2017