A tweet is a short message or thought that can be communicated to your audience via the social media platform, Twitter. Tweets are limited to 140 characters, which includes spaces.
This makes it a little tricky to fit your message into such a small space, but it can be done! You just have to be careful with how you write.
Twitter has changed the number of characters in a tweet several times over the years, from 120 characters all the way up to 190 characters. As of this article being written, the character limit is back down to 140.
While this may seem easy enough to do, many people make mistakes when trying to cram their messages into these tiny spaces. There is a very fine line between fitting in all your points and being completely nonsensical due to not enough character space.
It encourages shorter, more concise tweets
Since the limit is only 140 characters, it encourages users to be more concise with their tweets. People are more likely to leave out unnecessary words and hashtags when they know they have a limited space to work with.
This allows for the tweets to be more focused on what the user wants to say rather than trying to fit everything in.
Since the maximum character limit is 20 less than a regular tweet, people also tend to include less @replies and @mentions since there is not enough space. This may seem like a bad thing, but it helps reduce clutter and distraction.
The Verified Twitter Accounts feature recently changed its name to ‘Legitimate Accounts’ due to the new feature of ‘Verified accounts’. This is because they did not want to imply that only verified accounts were legitimate accounts.(The Verifier). This shows that not all accounts are legitimate, but some are still considered so by Twitter.
Longer tweets are harder to read
Another factor that influences how people read your tweets is the number of characters they contain. As it stands, the Twitter platform limits you to 140 characters per tweet.
While this may seem like enough space to get your point across, research shows that longer tweets are harder to read and lose their impact.
In a study conducted by the University of San Francisco, it was found that when tweets reached a certain length, readers began to lose focus and interest.
This is most likely due to the fact that Twitter allows you to attach photos, videos, and links in your tweets. Adding these elements takes up space, which can lead to a tweet reaching its character limit.
Therefore, it is important to keep this in mind when you are crafting your tweet- if you add extra elements such as images or links, then you may need to shorten your message so it does not come out too long.
Twitters old 140 character limit was too restrictive
In late 2017, Twitter announced that it was doing away with the old 140 character limit for tweets. Now, users have up to 300 characters to work with!
The company said that the old limit was too restrictive, forcing people to shorten or abbreviate their thoughts. With the new limit, people will be able to share their thoughts more fully.
This will lead to more diverse and inclusive conversations on the platform as well as more engagement since people can’t fit as many tweets into the limited space.
The new character count is an experiment, however. It will be tested over the coming weeks before being made permanent. It will apply to all languages except for Chinese, Japanese and Korean which have longer character counts.
Twitter is not the first platform to test a higher character count. Other social networks like Facebook and Snapchat have done so in the past with mixed results.
Many people tweeted within the limit anyway
Even though the limit was enforced, many people tweeted within the limit anyway. This may be because people who were aware of the character limit were more likely to keep tweets short, or because it was so easy to go over.
Some people even took advantage of the extra space to include links in their tweets, making them twice as long. Since the tweet length wasn’t a big deal, no one really cared.
Indeed, only 1% of all tweets sent during the experiment were longer than 140 characters, and only 0.5% were longer than 190 characters. Most Twitter users knew how to fit their thoughts into fewer than 140 characters – and that wasn’t necessarily by being concise.
The study also found that on average, tweets increased in length by only two characters per month over the course of 2017, despite Twitter adding new features like threading and video sharing.
The new limit will not affect all languages equally
A few languages, including Japanese, Korean and Chinese, could still present a problem. Their characters are wider and take up more space.
The new limit will not affect all languages equally, as tweets in Chinese could still run over the limit. As of now, there is no plan to change this by Twitter.
Although this may not be an issue for users who write in these languages, it could be a problem for those who read them. If a user tries to tweet a message in another language but does not fit within the limit, then the user will have to edit it or ask them to edit it themselves.
For instance, if someone wanted to read a tweet in Chinese that was too long, they would have to either delete some of the information or read only part of the message. This could potentially cause confusion or misunderstanding.
Some words are now counted as two characters
A new feature added to Twitter allows some words to be counted as two characters instead of one. This is only done for very short words, and only if they fit in the space left after one character and before the next.
For example, the word “I’m” is now counted as a single character, so you can fit more words in a tweet!
Other short words that are now counted as two characters include “is”, “at”, “or”, and “the”. This may not seem like a big change, but it does make one character tweets longer which helps with fitting into the 140 character limit.
However, some people have taken this new feature too far by putting very short words in multiple places in their tweets. This defeats the purpose of making your tweet longer so that you can fit more information in! It also looks quite silly with all of these short words.
Will this impact marketing?
Yes, very soon. As of November 1, 2018, all tweets will be limited to just length of 140 characters. This is a big change, and will really affect how people use this social media platform.
Prior to this, you could write a lengthy tweet if you included multiple links or emojis. With that option no longer available, your character count will really depend on what you are trying to say.
The Twitter team shared that the goal of the change is to create a sense of urgency around every tweet. People will have to focus more on what they want to say instead of writing something long and expansive.
With the current number of characters, it would be hard to fit in any marketing content like a link or product mention unless it was really short and concise.
The impact on users
As Twitter has changed its character limit, users have felt it. The company has had to deal with many user complaints as a result of these changes.
When they lowered the character limit, many people voiced their opinion that it was too hard to fit a thought into just fourteen characters. Because of this, people had to leave out important thoughts, which took away from the point of Twitter.
Changing the number of characters again will likely bring on more complaints, but it is important for the company to do so. They need to ensure that users can fit their thoughts into the new limit, and cannot have too many problems with this change.
By having an even shorter character limit, it will be harder for people to tweet long comments or thoughts. This may lead to less engagement and less use of the app, which is not what Twitter wants. By lengthening the limit again, they are helping to prevent this.
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