Twitter’s extended its 280-character limit to up to 4,000 characters - and everyone had the same response

Back in the early days of Twitter, it was well-known for requiring users to neatly summarise a thought or idea into 140 characters. In 2017, it doubled the limit in almost all countries to reduce “cramming”, but argued the “brevity” of the platform remained because in the testing phase, people still penned tweets below 140 “most of the time”.

Well, “brevity” on Twitter now appears to be completely dead, as the site announced on Wednesday that subscribers to its paid Blue service in the US can play around with up to 4,000 characters in a single tweet.

Yes, really.

In a 1,000-character essay of their own - which we’re summarising because we all know we aren’t reading all of it - Twitter Blue said: “Need more than 280 characters to express yourself? We know that lots of you do… and while we love a good thread, sometimes you just want to tweet everything all at once.

“We get that. So we’re introducing longer tweets!

“Most standard functions of Tweeting still apply, whether you want to post a picture, use a hashtag, or create a poll. But now you can type all the way up to 4,000 characters.”

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With the feature in its early days, those composing the gigantic tweets on Twitter’s website (rather than a mobile app) can’t save them as drafts or schedule them for later.

Anyone can reply to, retweet and quote tweet a 280-character plus tweet, but it’s only Twitter Blue subscribers who have the ability to post one in any format.

So yes, someone could - in theory - quote tweet a 4,000-character tweet with another 4,000 character essay of their own.

Twitter Blue continued: “Don’t worry, Twitter is still Twitter. We know longer Tweets could mean a lot of scrolling, so they’ll be capped at 280 characters on your timeline and you’ll see a ‘show more’ prompt to click and read the whole tweet.”

Well, that’s something… we think.

But with the new feature giving some accounts extra blank space which is enough to make even Taylor Swift jealous, other users aren’t exactly sold on the idea - and used the same meme to make that clear:

And while Twitter itself didn’t confirm what caused it, just a few hours after rolling out the new feature, many users reported issues with accessing the platform.

Coincidence? We think not…

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