Whether or not it’s a loved or hated trait, Twitter is renowned for its 140 character limit. Always priding itself on the limit in order to provoke creative ways for its users to get their views across, Twitter has lasted over 11 years in this format. Recently, however, the Twitter character limit has grown to 280 characters. They’re not just adding a few extra characters, they are DOUBLING them… A complete game changer.
This has created a lot of controversy around the topic, especially for those who owe their social success to their short, witty comments within the 140 limit. Users have resorted to using hashtags as a way to get their point across, posting hashtags with short explanations of their thoughts, without the need for spaces between words. They already stopped images from being included in the word count last year, which allowed for a lot more freedom, yet without making any vital changes. Will images still be exempt in this new 280 increase? This would certainly cut down the limit to a more reasonable twitter-like size.
So is it just change that people don’t like, or is it the actual concept?
On one hand, yes, it gives you so much more room to express your opinion and for brands to communicate and promote their products in a lot more detail. On the other hand, the 140 limit encouraged brands to differentiate their content across each social channel - Twitter required a punchy, direct post instead of a full explanation of products. Will people also stop creating their own weird and wonderful hashtags due to the ease of posting freely now? Or will the original users even change the way they tweet? My bets are on the original users keeping to a 140 limit, even if the 280 limit is rolled out to everyone, essentially attempting to boycott the new 280 feature.
Someone has even gone as far as creating a Chrome Extension to block any tweets with 280 characters from showing, supposedly with the aim to stop them from clogging up feeds, and that’s even before the new feature has been rolled out to everyone.
Asking some of the team here at Crowd, we all had slightly varying opinions on the matter:
So, after this test campaign, will Twitter actually go ahead with this huge character increase? As a global digital marketing agency, we would love to hear your point of view, find us on Twitter @thisiscrowd.
