Just last month, we wrote about how social media platform Twitter was expanding the character limit of its tweets from 280 characters to a whopping 4,000 characters, in a move designed exclusively for subscribers of Twitter Blue. Now, however, it seems that 4,000 characters isn’t enough for the app, and this already hefty limit is being more than doubled.
It was less than a month ago that Twitter announced its new 4,000-character tweets in the form of a rather uninspiring 4,000-character tweet of its own, made up only of the words “more words” repeated over and over and over. This feature is now up and running, with the circa 300,000 subscribers to Twitter Blue now having 4,000 characters at their disposal.
This time around, however, the news was broken in a much more subtle (and shorter) way, with Twitter CEO Elon Musk revealing the planned feature as a reply to a question:
As an attachment? How many chars? We are extending longform tweets to 10k soon.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2023
Musk didn’t give much away – “soon” doesn’t give much indicator of when the new limit will be available, or to whom, but it can be assumed that as with the 4,000 characters, this will be an exclusive feature for its Blue subscribers as well.
It does beg the question of why Twitter thinks introducing so many more characters is necessary, especially so soon after expanding the limit already. While the reasoning can only be guessed at, at this stage, it’s likely a way to keep users on the app itself, as they won’t need to be redirected to other sites to read further on topics, and to provide further advertising potential as people consume longer-form content – as well as an attempt to entice more users to become Blue subscribers.
As with the 4,000-character limit, it’s undeniable that more characters will bring advantages to businesses in particular, allowing them more space to get their messages across and not having to omit any important details to squeeze messaging into a single tweet, else risk creating a thread in which the replies are lost within users’ feeds. However, the beauty of Twitter for many lies in its short-form content, and so whether people will actually take the time to read long-form tweets mid-scroll remains to be seen.
Time will tell as to its success, but for now, if you want to maximise your social media efforts, check out our Social Media & Content Masterclass.
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