Twitter's character limit might jump from 280 to 1,000 | Mashable.

Twitter's character limit might jump from 280 to 1,000

Why not just make it infinite, then?

How big should a tweet be? Credit: Nurphoto/Getty Images

Twitter's character limit might soon balloon to 1,000, up from the current limit of 280 characters.

Recently, a Twitter user suggested that the social media platform increases the character limit to 1,000, and Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk responded "it's on the todo list."

In its early days, Twitter was often referred to as a microblogging service, primarily because of its 140 character limit for individual tweets. This was increased to 280 characters in 2017, and the limit, which is one of the key differentiators between Twitter and other social media services such as Facebook, remained in place ever since.

Since taking over at Twitter in October, Musk indicated, on several occasions, that he intends to increase the character limit. Just yesterday, he responded "good idea" to a Twitter user's suggestion to increase the character limit to 420 (a number that has importance for cannabis culture and is often referenced by Musk, most famously when he said he's "taking Tesla private" at the price of $420 per share).

Twitter's character limit has always been a divisive topic, with some users wanting more characters while others claim that increasing the limit will reduce the quality of posts and water down Twitter's identity which is largely associated with brevity.

The character limit increase is just one of many, many ideas Musk has thrown at the wall since taking the reins of Twitter. Other upcoming or potential changes include a new verification systempaywalled videos, and end-to-end encryption.

More in Twitter

Comments

  1. I was the type of college student the maximum word count on assignments was created for. I’ve always appreciated the character limit on Twitter because it’s good practice for making your points in a more concise way. Perhaps more than 280 is appropriate but 1,000 is probably more than necessary.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. agreed! It help me.

      Delete
    2. agree, short makes your think better before writing. Thats why I like Twitter more than FB.

      Delete
    3. I’m the same and I learned a lot from having a max word count. Maybe 500 is a good round number but would still allow more thought?

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    4. try Hella Doge 420 limit is better

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    5. I always chafed at the the shortness constraint and its pandering to unsubstantiated soundbite culture in which people just fart out oral methane thought-bubbles as one liners...

      If one wanted to engage with a topic, frame a bit of background, show how the OP was incorrect (or even a total idjit) and then present a better alternative that would take 4 or 5:10 word sentences
      Bzzzzzzt - into the red

      I would often just copy paste the offending message into an email - for safety
      and then cut the "excess" length and "..." the end
      and paste the next chunk with a "..." leadin

      I can see the technical advantage of having a max limit -, 1024 or 2048 Chara - maybe with some reservation for headers, addresses, etc

      Delete
  2. The character limit was what made Twitter unique

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. and what made it 10 times smaller than FB

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    2. limited and straight to the point. New in 60sec

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    3. limited is bad is my point.

      Delete
  3. Shouldn’t it be called squawker then instead of twitter? I could see them expanding the char count with some sort of “read more” option to see the full length. But the initial view needs to be short and sweet. My assumption was that the name twitter came from the concept of a cell phone chirp… quick and short.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The character limit is the best part of twitter.

      Brief description and link is the best way to handle long thoughts.

      Intermediate thoughts are best conveyed through a thread...although it should be easier to figure out how to do a thread.

      Delete
    2. Eh. We get bumper stickers and sophistry

      Delete
  4. The Titanic keeps throwing out lifeboats. Let’s see how many he has.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. he said he was going to change things

      These aren’t lifeboats -the Founder is even helping him out on many of these projects

      Delete
  5. The forced brevity was always Twitters greatest strength. Of course he'll change it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yeah, that's why I saw so many post's write in part's 1, 2, 3 and more

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    2. I think that was mainly Trump. 😂

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    3. Sure, you see that occasionally, but not anywhere near the majority. Not even close.

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    4. every day, I know what I see

      Delete
  6. Too many characters for the average twit.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Another genius move. Only a genius could have thought of that

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well the sycophants are fawning and believing that lol

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    2. I know right? Freaking BRILLIANT! 💅🏻

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  8. If you’re writing a tweet with 1k characters… bye. 😂

    ReplyDelete
  9. Mashable still on a breakdown because of Elon, come on guys! You can do better! How about an article on how Disney is losing money and big time!?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mashable is getting a lot of clicks thanks to focusing on Twitter while Musk is taking a wrecking ball to it. Don't you know how the internet works?

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    2. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/.../how-to.../avoiding-fallacies

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    3. they are the masters of clickbait 😂

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    4. Oh, the important stuff 😂

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    5. Apparently it works with you.

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    6. yep I don't even read the article I come straight to the comments 😂

      Delete
    7. are you trumpers even capable of having a single conversation in life without using "whataboutism"? Seriously.

      Delete
  10. He's really doing everything he can to kill the goose. At this rate it would have been a lot cheaper and easier to build a social media site from scratch instead of buying one and turning it into a new one.

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  11. Not a single one of these ideas has been thought out beyond the fever dream from which it arose.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Soon Shakespeare will have a verified account with all his work in a single Tweet 😅

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  13. He could have done so much good with 44 Billion dollars. Who cares what happens to Twitter.

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  14. If he is going to up the character limit, it should be to 420😉

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  15. Because that's what twitter needs, more think-pieces 😒

    ReplyDelete
  16. Musk is a putz! Says he founded Telas. He didn’t. Said he founded SpaceX. He didn’t. What he knows is how to get tax breaks and money out of the government and how to kill Twitter. lol

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  17. You may need to rethink the name then. “Rambling”, “TLDR” or “Verbal Diarrhea”?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They will need a TLDR button to click at this rate

      Delete
  18. Didn't it used to be 40?

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  19. It’ll just be Facebook then

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Pretty much. An improvement, IMO, but not something that would distinguish the service from 100 others.

      Delete
  20. The character limit for many users is Musk himself…

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  21. I think people's fears of Twitter becoming a right wing version of itself are wrong. It will become a right wing version of Facebook. All that is left to do is allow people to create groups and pages, and a handful of other odd features to make it look much like FB.

    ReplyDelete
  22. What he needs to do is extended the @ handle to more characters.

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  23. Its not a tweet anymore its a blog 😄

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  24. Perfect for a covfefe rant!

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  25. OP always has astute advice for the successful businessman. 🙏🏽

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  26. KISS It (keep it simple, stupid) 280 characters is more than enough.

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  27. I wonder if Twits can think up more than 280 characters?

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  28. As increasingly most of us don’t want to put ANY characters on that twit-owned platform!

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  29. Twitter roots was a text messaging service.The original charter limit was to accommodate the minimum size of SMS for cell phones at the time. Obviously that limit is not necessary anymore.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Change lots of things at once then you won’t be able to tie cause to effect. But you’ll look real busy!

    ReplyDelete
  31. Twitter was hacked. Easy target now 🤣

    ReplyDelete
  32. You find always things to not like with Musk’s Twitter?

    ReplyDelete
  33. Haha, I can write a novel in one post 😂

    ReplyDelete
  34. Should just name it Blogger now.

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  35. So just carve away everything that makes twitter twitter lol

    ReplyDelete
  36. Does he really need more words to tell his employees they don't work hard enough?

    ReplyDelete
  37. Yes, more time spent reading incomplete sentences.

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  38. First good decision

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. nah, this has the been the worse one so far. The whole appeal of Twitter was the short posts.

      Delete
  39. Gonna post novels soon.

    ReplyDelete
  40. The essence of Twitter is the ingenuity to create tweets with that character limit, not create long and boring texts

    ReplyDelete
  41. Press 1 a lot of times to make it 1,000 characters lol

    ReplyDelete
  42. birds are singing "twit, twit, twit..."

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  43. Rethuglicans love wordy lies.

    ReplyDelete
  44. Man, Mashable is really sick about the media not being in control of Twitter. Lmao

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    Replies
    1. so accurate. If they also did any research they would know that it'll probably jump to a 420 char limit.

      Delete
    2. For the low cost of $69 per year.

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    3. true man! check my comment above .. it's so obvious haha

      Delete
  45. I dont want to read books. Bad idea

    ReplyDelete
  46. It's for TRUMP convenience 🤦🏻

    ReplyDelete
  47. One thing I’ve never liked about Twitter are when people post a bunch of tweets that comprise one long message. When I had Twitter notifications set up on my phone, I would get dings non-stop, and 99.9% of the time, it was people posting tweet after tweet after tweet to relay one message. Glad I never became reliant on Twitter, because I don’t predict they’ll survive this… at least, not with who is currently steering the ship.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thread Roll really helpful. And I stopped notifications with all social media. Need to breathe.

      Delete
  48. nooooooooo I want my extra interactions 😂😂😂

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  49. Waaa waaaaaa waaaa 🤣🤣🤣

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  50. O well if I don’t want to read a paragraph at the moment then I’ll just scroll by no need to bring the tissues

    ReplyDelete
  51. people alreaedy tweet long posts, they just do them in chunks. This makes sense. And if its a I got crit by text for 100 then don't read it?

    ReplyDelete
  52. Seriously? That's not a tweet. That's a long chirp. Just change name to The Long Chirp. 🤣🤣

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  53. What the heck is Twitter?

    ReplyDelete
  54. 🙄
    https://media1.tenor.co/images/de9cd8b9efaf9ba8488cd2eb62c34711/tenor.gif?c=VjFfZmFjZWJvb2tfd2ViY29tbWVudHM&itemid=16731295

    ReplyDelete
  55. He said he would copy Hella Doge and make it 420 in which case I will sue - no question

    ReplyDelete
  56. If he did this, that would be one move I'd actually agree with. It wouldn't be enough to make me use Twitter. He lost me forever. But being able to elaborate and not talk in sound bites is a good thing. How many times have you seen "/1", "/2", etc. on posts because people had more to say than would fit in a tweet? I think a longer post length would make Twitter more competitive.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Twitter wasn't meant to write a Memoir, Novel, Script...People are Poor Communicators.

      Be Clear, Concise & Consistent.

      Delete
    2. The average word is 5 characters. That gives you about 47 words (once you account for the period and the spaces between the words) to get your point across. 47 words is barely even flash fiction. It lends itself to shouting slogans, not meaningful discussion.

      Delete
    3. Twitter isn’t for meaningful discussion.

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    4. Yeah, and that's kind of the problem. 🙂

      Delete
    5. use thread reader, etc. there are tons of other platforms. But The bird app should have never gone more that 140. The 280 was dumb. I remember being mad then.

      Delete
    6. Ignorance DOESN'T Prove your point.

      Delete
    7. How would your ignorance prove anything about my point?

      Delete
  57. The limitless will hold out....a thousand limiting free speech I expected....just didn't expect it do be done so brute and basic. Expectations.

    ReplyDelete
  58. Yeah because 280...2...80...definitely sounds like a nice neat number everyone would assume needs to be the limit...

    ReplyDelete
  59. why not reddit? ☺️

    ReplyDelete
  60. Move on mashable...

    ReplyDelete
  61. Genius in action 🥳https://media.tenor.co/images/0e42f722e2ec16e5cbaefd04f5440104/tenor.gif?c=VjFfZmFjZWJvb2tfd2ViY29tbWVudHM&itemid=21819173

    ReplyDelete
  62. Now when you stumble on a tweet rant it will go on forever. Great!!! 😅🤣🤣

    ReplyDelete
  63. Welcomw to twit blog

    ReplyDelete
  64. Is there any news other than about some website that almost no one I know uses?

    ReplyDelete
  65. 280 isn’t enough so I can see a jump

    Makes sense to me

    ReplyDelete
  66. he should write a bestseller - "how to ruin a great thing in 5 or less steps".

    ReplyDelete
  67. it will sooner jump to 420

    ReplyDelete
  68. When given the freedom to write a whole blog post, people turn into deer in the headlights

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  69. Next Musk will require tweets be in all caps.

    ReplyDelete
  70. A 1,000 character tweet from trump would probably be less boring than hearing one of his stupid speeches live in person.

    ReplyDelete
  71. the dork is bringing back all the people that spread disinformation, conspiracies, threats and of course all the mayhem that the lies and stupidity bring.
    What could possibly go wrong, especially after firing thousands of people? LMAO
    He already blocked people using his name and/or making fun of him (so much for free speech), and verified Jesus Christ.

    ReplyDelete
  72. Mashabe, why are you so pissy about Musk? Why are you so desperate for his D?

    ReplyDelete
  73. Twitter created a completely weird phenomenon in punctuation
    In order to save space, periodS are only used to express concern, or signify you’re old AF

    ReplyDelete
  74. I might join Twitter if that happens.

    ReplyDelete
  75. Mashable big mad! 🤡

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  76. NO quality communication to be found on Twitter

    ReplyDelete
  77. This will represent a direct challenge to FaceBook.

    ReplyDelete
  78. Throw the dart against the wall, if it falls, throw another dart. Keep trying till you see what sticks.

    ReplyDelete
  79. Would be unfair to all the racists and fascists who struggle to articulate themselves at the current character limit. Takes a lot of #covfefe to think that hard!

    ReplyDelete
  80. Yeah, more room for hatred, bigotry and mis/disinformation.

    ReplyDelete
  81. Even longer lies from Trump then

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  82. Just a small reminder to you Mashable..... https://www.statementsclothing.nu/huvudbonader/beanies-collection/basic-beanies/go-woke-go-broke-d-style-one-size

    ReplyDelete
  83. How about zero?
    Better, no?

    ReplyDelete
  84. If you don't change with the times you become obsolete, this has no impact on short response but let's others say more in one tweet than having to break it up into more than one.

    ReplyDelete
  85. Not sure if 1000 is a lot, but maybe 500 words would be OK.

    ReplyDelete
  86. What if you didn't get the limit increase unless you got the blue check? Lol

    ReplyDelete
  87. he is dumb as a bag of hammers

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  88. This is the only guy that mashable writes about now fake journalist who don't report on real stories

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  89. Oh, sounds like a dream come true for spammers

    ReplyDelete
  90. So… it’s Facebook now

    ReplyDelete
  91. We don't need a dissertation on Twitter. Stupid

    ReplyDelete
  92. Why he doesn't Announce making Twitter a new blogger 🤦‍♂️?

    ReplyDelete
  93. "Why not just make it infinite, then?"- literally a definition of a stupid title

    ReplyDelete
  94. So babble mouth can just run on and on…….

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  95. You see, Mashable are my indicator if I wanted to know if the mainstream media are pushing a certain narrative.. examples would be how bad Qatar is and how cute and cuddly those who went there knowing the the rainbow flag is not allowed yet went all the same! Turning on Elon is their Narrative now ... especially, after reinstating D Trump! but they think we have such a short memory! the same nonsense was said when twitter increased to 280 back in 2017 and of course Mashable claimed that trolls and DT are the only happy people with that! and the BUNCH OF PEOPLE are "freaking out"!! It's so obvious! News is not your profession too emotional (hehe) for it!
    https://mashable.com/article/twitter-character-limit-280-reactions

    ReplyDelete
  96. He wants to destroy everything that made Twitter unique as a service.

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  97. Because Elon likes to blather on and on... but then... ADHD sets in.

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  98. Soon, will be the same as Facebook!

    ReplyDelete
  99. Elon lives rent free in Mashable’s head. It’s great! 😆

    ReplyDelete
  100. This will give the right and left conspirators freedom of dumb speech better

    ReplyDelete
  101. Yes, because long af threads of 280 word posts is so much better, right?

    ReplyDelete
  102. Genius level stuff here🥴🥴😂🤣

    ReplyDelete
  103. My tweets later:
    If you 😶 are really ✔ being serious 😳, this 👉 sub 💪 was made to store important 😎 documentaries 📑 one day we may need 👨‍🎓, and we shall easily 😀 “copy-paste” 🤯 them in our resumes 😎😎 for applying to jobs 💯.

    Alternatively, you can use copypastas to effectively get kicked out of group texts that you want nothing to do with. The first time you send a 10 page text is all it takes.

    ReplyDelete
  104. Maybe you should have bought Twitter.

    ReplyDelete
  105. Apparently Elon thinks we need to hear more of his BS.

    ReplyDelete
  106. Thats 250 consecutive LMAO!

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  107. Should like another Facebook

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  108. How about shut it down twatter

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  109. Who cares, most of us have left 🤣🤣

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  110. Revolutionary thinking.

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  111. The Seething here is so delicious!

    ReplyDelete
  112. Hello please 🥺🙏🥺 cash app me tag on $kennyla2a to get something to eat please and god bless you.

    ReplyDelete

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