Whether you like it or not, it’s time to break free from the constraints of 140 characters. Twitter announced on Tuesday it’s officially expanding the character limit to 280 for nearly all of its users. Which, in case you were wondering, is just exactly as long as this paragraph.
The company’s decision came after a 280-character trial run that began in September among a select few people who mostly protested the change (at least until they started unironically writing long tweets).
Twitter explained in a blog post why it decided to make the tweak permanent:
The company added that even though the option exists to write 280 characters, most people end up keeping their tweets brief and below 140 characters. (The change won’t apply to Chinese-, Korean-, or Japanese-language users.) But already the expanded limit has come in handy — for making fun of the expanded limit:
Prolific Twitter user President Donald Trump’s refusal to contain his message within the old 140-character limit once led to a harrowing nine-minute pause while officials at the Pentagon feared he was about to start nuclear war:
But it only took Trump a few minutes to send his first 280-character tweet:
Sourse: vox.com
