Twitter’s 140-character limit no longer counts media, quotes or polls

The change has been expected for quite some time but the company just made it official in a tweet. Twitter is also excluding quoted tweets, although links will still be counted toward the character limit. “This will make having conversations on Twitter easier and more straightforward, no more penny-pinching your words to ensure they reach the whole group”. Last May, the San Francisco-based social network announced that improvements were in the works, and as of September 19, they have been deployed in the social network. With this new counting method, certain things don’t count against the tweet’s maximum character count, though that is remaining the same at 140-characters per tweet.

While some users wanted Twitter to remove the 140-character limit completely or have a higher limit, Twitter has that limit as one of the USPs.

User names in replies probably won’t count against the 140-character limit for long.

Starting today – four months after announcing it would do so – Twitter will no longer count photos, videos, polls and quoted tweets against the 140-character limit for normal tweets. According to The Verge, the company might not count usernames at the beginning of a tweet towards the 140-character limit, either. The plan has been at least a year in the making (if not since Twitter began).

The new feature is now rolling out, so users should see availability soon.

The Verge takes Twitter to task for having “dragged its feet” on rolling out this update, and that’s fair, since the company announced the impending change nearly five months ago.

Last month, eMarketer said Twitter’s share of USA social network users will decline to 28.1 percent this year and will continue to drop through 2020, as it loses users to Snapchat, Instagram, and messaging apps.