Twitter has made some changes with its popular tweeting service, beginning with the way the site count towards its 140-character restriction. The company said the new update will simplify the service on top of helping people to engage more.
For starters, media attachments like photos, GIFs, videos, polls, or quoted tweets will no longer count against the 140-character limit for a tweet. This is definitely a welcome addition, giving users more breathing room to craft tweets. However, contrary to what was previously reported; links to other web pages will still count toward the character limit.
Aside from that, replies to another Twitter users will no longer begin with the user’s Twitter handle; hence it will not account for the word limit. This is especially important in a discussion with several people mentioned, where the replies gets increasingly shorter until they eventually dies off. One thing to note is that this only applies to @replies; an initial tweet with @mentions will still appear in the tweet and count against the character limit.
Interestingly, Twitter has also made some changes to its broadcasting features. Tweets starting with a username (not to be confused with direct replies) will now reach your entire audience, rather than just limiting it to users who follow you both. This removes the awkward need for a “.@” convention, which is how people broadcast Tweets widely at the moment.
Finally, users are also getting a Retweet and Quote Retweet button on their own post. This will definitely make it easier to resurface old tweets, if not to create a better looking timeline.
The new updates will be rolling out in the coming months, according to the company in a blog post.
(Source: Twitter)
