Twitter today is moving away from its traditional 140 character tweet limit. The company has announced that it is testing a new 280 character limit for some users. Product manager Aliza Rosen made the likely controversial reveal in a blog post this afternoon…
The company says it came to this decision after realizing how character and word count varied based on different languages. Rosen writes that languages like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese can "convey about double the amount of information in one character" as other languages such as English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French.
For instance, some 9 percent of tweets sent in English have 140 characters, while just 0.4 percent of tweets sent in Japanese hit the cap.While some long-time Twitter users might be turned off by the move to double tweet length, the company hopes the move will make it easier for everyone to use the service.
