Twitter will ditch the 280 character restrict and permit longer tweets ‘quickly’, says Elon Musk

‘Chief Twit’ Elon Musk has confirmed that he will probably be dropping the 280 character restrict on Twitter ‘quickly’.

The brand new social media boss made the announcement this morning whereas responding to an 82 tweet-long thread. 

Customers are at present restricted to tweets of 280 characters, however ditching that is one in all a protracted listing of guarantees Musk has made concerning the way forward for the positioning.

He first broached the topic pre-takeover, in April, the place he expressed that ‘Twitter is *means* overdue for lengthy kind tweets‘.

Then, on the finish of final month, he replied ‘completely’ to a different Twitter person asking if he might ‘do away with character limits’.

Nonetheless, regardless of these claims, Musk additionally revealed yesterday that he plans to cut back his time on the firm and ultimately discover a new chief.

When Twitter first launched in 2006, tweets have been capped at 140 characters, which was pretty restrictive.

However in 2018, Twitter doubled this restrict to 280 characters to make it simpler for customers to ‘specific themselves.’

Nonetheless, preliminary knowledge from Twitter when the character restrict was lifted instructed that almost all Twitter customers nonetheless put up brief tweets. 

In February this 12 months, a revered leaker claimed that Twitter was engaged on a brand new characteristic known as ‘Twitter Articles’, permitting customers to put up lengthier messages. 

Jane Manchun Wong posted a screenshot of what Twitter Articles was more likely to seem like, indicating that they might have their very own devoted part throughout the app.

‘Twitter is engaged on “Twitter Articles” and the flexibility to create one inside Twitter,’ she wrote. ‘Chance a brand new longform format on Twitter.’

Then in June, this characteristic appeared to evolve in ‘Twitter Notes’, which let customers put up blogs of as much as 2,500 phrases, and was trialled by a number of writers.

Notes allowed individuals put up textual content, images, movies, GIFs and embedded tweets in a single piece of content material, and even edit it afterwards.

Nonetheless, the instrument didn’t make it out of the testing stage previous to Musk’s takeover earlier this month, who has since made a collection of fast modifications on the firm.

The billionaire rapidly fired Twitter’s earlier CEO and different senior leaders after which laid off half its employees earlier this month.

He additionally made remarks about Twitter’s future management whereas defending his $56 billion (£47 billion) pay bundle at Tesla Inc in court docket yesterday.

‘I anticipate to cut back my time at Twitter and discover any person else to run Twitter over time,’ he stated.

Nonetheless Musk later stated in a tweet that he’ll proceed to run Twitter till it’s in a robust place, although it can ‘take a while.’ 

Within the court docket in Delaware, USA, he added that modifications to a extra ‘hardcore’ work surroundings at Twitter will probably be executed by the top of subsequent week.

On Wednesday morning, workers have been advised they should signal a pledge to have the ability to keep on of their roles the place they might be ‘working lengthy hours at excessive depth’, in line with the Washington Publish.

Employees acquired an electronic mail stating: ‘In case you are positive that you simply wish to be a part of the brand new Twitter, please click on sure on the hyperlink beneath.’

It linked to a web-based kind, with Musk telling workers that if they didn’t signal by 5pm Japanese time on Thursday they might get three months of severance pay.