Twitter To Get A Character Update

So you’re on Twitter, writing a life changing tweet that needs to link to another site. The content is great and you’re bound to get at least 4 re-tweets and a couple favourites, you paste in the link and to your horror you see a little red number in the bottom of the screen (-4). You’ve gotten carried away again and stepped over the character count, what a Twitter nightmare!

Well, according to Bloomberg, there may soon be a solution to the problem. Within the next two weeks there is a good chance that Twitter will update its service to stop links and photos counting against the 140-character limit. At the moment a link will use 23 characters even after being automatically shortened by the platform, the update would allow for more, much needed character real state.

In the early days, Twitter relied on text messages as a common way to send a tweet. The 140-character limit allowed all the information to fit in one message and so the limit of characters was more of a technical issue than a feature. However this “issue” has become one of the main attractions to Twitter. A short and simple snippet of information shared instantly, that’s what makes it great. But add in a link, a photo and some hashtags and your left with very little in terms of wording, this update has been long awaited by Twitter users. This update also ties in with the other recent updates including the new enhanced DM’s as the social network tries to attract new users, but the question is… is it enough?

Twitter has been looking for new ways to help improve interest after struggling with user growth while other networks like Snapchat and Whatsapp continue to grow in popularity. The aim is to attract more brands, advertisers and other power players to help bring Twitter back into the game.