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All You Want To Know About Twitter's 140 Character Limit Ease

Twitter Eases 140 Character Limit, Makes All Replies Public
The Twitter Inc. logo is displayed on the facade of the company's headquarters in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013. Twitter Inc. surged 85 percent in its trading debut, as investors paid a premium for its promises of fast growth. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Twitter Inc. logo is displayed on the facade of the company's headquarters in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013. Twitter Inc. surged 85 percent in its trading debut, as investors paid a premium for its promises of fast growth. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Twitter announced a big update to the platform, easing their 140 character limit per tweet which might fundamentally alter conversations on the website. The social network is hoping to give a boost to their stagnant user growth with this change. Here are some other new features that twitter is adding.

1. Links, pictures won't be counted anymore

Twitter has been trying to become more engaging for users by encouraging them to post news links, GIFs, pictures, videos and other multimedia content. But a shortened link or a picture does take up some character space in the tweet. So from now on the company will not count any multimedia content against the 140 character limit. Twitter's polls and quote tweets are also part of the multimedia content.

2. @usermanes won't be counted in a reply

When you're replying to one or more person in the conversation Twitter counts all the handles (usernames) against the 140 character limit. But soon this restriction will be removed. However, if you start a new tweet with @username or mention someone in the reply explicitly, it will count against the limit.

3. Replies visible to all, no more (.@ ) needed

Earlier, you needed to add a special character like a dot to initiate a reply you wanted all your followers to see. Now all your replies will be visible to all of your followers even if they are not following the person you have replied to. This might cause a bit of annoyance as well because certain users wouldn't want to see every conversation of the person they are following.

4. Retweet and quote yourself

If you feel that your tweet is too good now you can retweet yourself apart from liking (favoriting is the word for the old school Twitter users) the tweet. You can even quote your tweet and add more words to it. Twitter clearly wants you to promote your tweets so they can get more traction. It is the same as liking your own post on Facebook.

"One of the biggest priorities for this year is to refine our product and make it simpler. We're focused on making Twitter a whole lot easier and faster. This is what Twitter is great at – what's happening now, live conversation and the simplicity that we started the service with," said Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of the company.

"We're not giving up on the idea of Twitter being in the moment. That concept of brevity, speed and live conversation – being able to think of something and put it out to the world instantly – that's what's most important," he added.

The microblogging platform's user growth has taken a beating of late, almost becoming stagnant in the US. Earlier this year, they even introduced a change in the timeline introducing algorithmic "While you were away" tweets. However, the company is saying that after introducing new on-boarding process the mutual follows are up by 48 percent.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.