On Nov. 7, the social media platform Twitter extended its characters per tweet from 140 to 280, and some love it and some hate it.
Some believe that it is the 140 characters which made Twitter unique. Instead of scrolling through endless paragraphs of posts, Twitter users saw posts that were quick and to the point.
“They’ve already changed so much, people used to be able to be creative with the word count and it was funny to see what people could come up with,” says Silvana Vargas, Business major.
Others say that they can now express more on the social media website. They no longer have to chose which word to shorten or misspell to not go over the character count.
With the 140 character limit, tweets had to be creative and simple, yet still be able to get your thought or point across. Think of a tweet as a thought bubble. Now you can go twice as long and many people think Twitter has lost its “charm”.
As the number of users grew, Twitter began to accommodate posting pictures, videos, gifs and other multimedia files. It also now has a news feature, that presents a collection of tweets related to specific story or topic.
Even with all these updates, one thing remained, the 140 character count.
But now, one of the last features that made Twitter,Twitter, is now gone. Users are not forced to tweet 280 characters, they can stay well below.
With the 280 limit there is more to say and more to be heard. Whether it is news stories being tweeted or lyrics of Taylor Swift being posted, Twitter is planning for the long run by extending the character count. It is smart from a business standpoint if they are trying to compete with Facebook.
However now that it is available to all users, you will be seeing more and more paragraphs as you scroll through your timeline.