Twitter expands to 280-character tweets starting today

Microblogging website Twitter Inc said it would expand to 280 characters tweets to users across the world.

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Reuters

Microblogging website Twitter Inc said it would expand to 280 characters tweets to users across the world starting November 8.

The company had first announced the plan to move beyond its traditional 140 characters back in September, noting at the time how a longer character count allowed users to express more of their thoughts without running out of room to tweet.

The expansion was initially available to a select group of Twitter users as a trial.

It had been feared that licence for an expanded character limit would negatively effect the brevity of the social media site experience.

The expanded limit will be rolled out to users in all languages except Chinese, Japanese and Korean – where cramming is not an issue because those scripts can convey more information in a single character.

Twitter's user base is somewhat split on whether the change would ruin Twitter. Tech media – outside of a couple level-headed responses – seemed to be opposed to the change.

Many argued that the increase to 280 characters would make Twitter less readable, as longer tweets filled their timelines.

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