
Photos, videos, GIFs, polls, quotes no longer count toward your 140 characters - mattiemass
https://twitter.com/twitter/status/777915304261193728
======
zakfu
[https://this-is-my-really-long-tweet-that-gets-around-the-
on...](https://this-is-my-really-long-tweet-that-gets-around-the-one-hundred-
forty-character-limit-by-making-the-whole-message-a-url-now-that-urls-no-
longer-count-toward-your-140-characters.com)

~~~
trizic
Surely it has some hard cap, otherwise I can see this being abused (base64
dumps)

~~~
andrewstuart2
Not sure what the appeal of inline base64 would be, though, over linking to a
hosted file. Twitter is about sharing text, and arbitrarily long URLs mean mom
and pop can achieve longer tweets by just adding [http://](http://) and using
dashes.

~~~
Navarr
not really, considering it'll get truncated

------
cpeterso
I wonder how many systems, within Twitter and third-party API users, were
broken by this change. I'm sure the 140 character limit is hardcoded,
explicitly or implicitly, for things like buffer sizes or database schemas in
tons of software.

~~~
choward
They do have a library that helps limit these types of issues:
[https://github.com/twitter/twitter-text](https://github.com/twitter/twitter-
text). However, it doesn't appear to be updated.

------
wineisfine
They must have worked years on this "improvement".

~~~
ramshorns
This is similar to the improvement Facebook made when they added a few emotion
buttons beside the like button. It's technically a pretty small change, but it
affects what is seen as one of the core features of the website.

What's Facebook? Oh yeah, that thing with the like button. What's Twitter?
Right, it's that thing with the 140 characters.

They must have spent a long time deciding whether it would be worth disrupting
what made them popular in the first place to add a new feature. And in
Twitter's case they probably also waited until single SMS messages were no
longer really necessary.

------
mxuribe
I can respect the cachet that twitter has had throughout the world, and the
wonderful, positive things its platform has enabled...But honestly, this kind
of improvement is so late in coming. Long ago, they should have raised the
character limit...Now, I know some might reply with, "but historically
SMS/texting limits to X characters only...". My response to this, is that
twitter could have adjusted their platform to gracefully degrade. That is, if
users can only tweet messages limited to 140 characters because of limits on
their device or limits of their infrastructure of submission, then that should
not stop other users - who do not have such limits - from tweeting longer
messages. Some might feel my comment has the benefit of hindsight, but
actually many, many users have said as much during Twitters early years. So
I'm not disclosing anything revolutionary or new.

------
jpalomaki
For me the 140 character limit is a bit too little. Trying to squeeze my
thoughts requires too much effort.

Even a small increase to for example 200 characters would make a big
difference.

~~~
labster
Write your tweets in a CJK language instead of one using a Latin character
set: it's like getting 3 bytes for the price of one. Twitter is a much nicer
platform in Japanese, as it gives the user plenty of space to state a complete
thought.

~~~
mhurron
Twitter is that important to you that learning to write Japanese is just a
little thing to use the platform?

~~~
iamdave
Maybe Japanese is their native tongue?

~~~
labster

        $ perl6
        > "日本人じゃないよ、でも日本語を勉強するは楽しいね？".chars
        25
        > "I'm not a Japanese person, but studying Japanese is fun, you know?".chars
        66
    

(sorry if the Japanese grammar is horrible)

------
kennydude
At least they actually added this into the API this time
[https://www.hitchhq.com/twitter/activities/upcoming-
changes-...](https://www.hitchhq.com/twitter/activities/upcoming-changes-to-
tweets-57dfb6557ab5cb2d63b136c4)

------
smegel
Must be part of the Grand Vision.

Or just someone tinkering with the controls hoping to avoid a crash.

------
kalms
Could have saved the Internet from a lot of useless traffic.

~~~
agumonkey
They should have 64c or less days. Just to motivate people to rethink their
writing.

------
biot
The title is misleading. Actual text:

"Rolling out now: photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and Quote Tweets no longer
count toward your 140 characters."

Otherwise you could post a tweet with 141 URLs separated by 140 spaces, and
only the spaces count.

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we updated the title from “URLs no longer count toward your 140
characters”. Unfortunately since the whole tweet doesn't fit in the title,
we'll assume the features are sorted by importance.

~~~
LukeB_UK
The updated title is incorrect. Those features have been part of twitter
before this, they just don't count towards the character limit anymore.

~~~
sctb
Thank you! Updated again.

------
dragonbonheur
My personal opinion is that Twitter still sticking to 140 characters is
stupid. If there is still an argument to be made for emergency services using
SMS, I'd like to counter that they could implement an "emergency mode twitter"
that reverts back to 140 characters in case there is an emergency and only in
regions concerned by and adjacent to the occurence of said emergency.

It's time they bump the character limit up to at least 512 characters.

~~~
brlewis
That's my intuition too. I don't think even the makers of twitter expected it
to be successful.

But in hindsight, since most usage is consumption, the 140-character limit may
actually be a killer feature, even though it irritates content producers.
People like sound bites.

~~~
mxuribe
I politely disagree. The vast majority of tweets are awful in communicating
succinctly - even as sound bites. Most tweeters, when challenged with the
140-character wall, lack enough details.

~~~
wruza
Not details made twitter. The dark side of people was abused, the need of
saying something short and senseless, making comments that have no meaning,
that is precious to them by itself. Someone sung a song? Million tweets.
Someone mistreated him? Two millions. Cat in the white house? Denial of
service. Someone asks complicated questions about our life? Silence. They all
want to go buy a thing, take it on and _feel important_. That's the main
reason why twitter, instagram and other bitch-oriented services exist. Main
auditory is happy with 140, that's why it is SO popular. Sorry, if I'm
somewhat harsh.

------
ocschwar
The Internet was going to be an instrument for elevating discourse.

Twitter turned it into the opposite with the 140 character limitation.

~~~
Zikes
Twitter is not the Internet.

~~~
redblacktree
In fact, we're on the internet now, on a website that serves as an instrument
for elevating discourse with its community standards!

~~~
ocschwar
A web site whose influence is over a much smaller portion of the public.

~~~
redblacktree
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/)
has impeccable standards and more than half a million subscribers, just as one
other example.

------
kazinator
What is the meaning of the 140 limit if this and that doesn't count toward it?

A 139 character message plus a 50 character uncounted URL won't pass through
SMS. The 140 limit is from SMS. If you're going through SMS, meet the limit.
If not, then chuck the limit, or pick another one. There is no way to
rationalize any half assing like counting only these kinds of tokens or
substrings in the message against a 140 limit but not others.

~~~
wodenokoto
They allow 140 unicode characters, so you are a few years late with that SMS
argument.

The limit is there because that is what makes it micro blogging. It might have
been invented for a different purpose, but it is a long time ago it was there
for that.

~~~
kazinator
So it wouldn't be micro-blogging if it were .. a 192 character limit?

~~~
Viper007Bond
Sure, but 140 has become a defining attribute of the service. Now it's 140
with an asterisk, which is less of a change than a straight up length
increase.

