Twitter Publicizes and Executes Character Limit Expansion

 

Twitter Expands Character Limit
Twitter‘s Product Manager, Aliza Rosen, announced the social media platform has expanded its character limit from 140 to 280, so “every person around the world could express themselves easily in a Tweet.”

Rosen and Twitter’s Senior Software Engineer, Ikuhiro Ihara, conducted an experiment in September based on the notion that a user can articulate twice the amount of information in one character using tongues like Japanese, Korean and Chinese versus English.

Twitter Expands Character Limit

They found that only 5% of tweets sent by focus group participators exceeded 140 characters, and 2% were longer than 190 characters. Research confirmed that the character limit differential upped engagement: followers, likes, mentions, retweets, time spent on the networking service and customer satisfaction without bombarding his or her timelines with incessant posts.

“People in the experiment told us that a higher character limit made them feel more satisfied with how they expressed themselves on Twitter, their ability to find good content, and Twitter overall,” said Rosen.