Why you don’t have 280 characters on Twitter yet
Big news, Twitter fans — the social media site announced yesterday that they’d be doubling their character count, from 140 to 280. That means that you probably don’t have to worry about word shortening or lack of punctuation to get your thoughts across. If you’re wondering why you don’t have 280 characters on Twitter yet, you’re not alone — this character extension is a game-changer, and a lot of us are pretty anxious to get started with it.
This move was tested back in September, when a few select users got to elongate their tweets, but it’s shortly rolling out to everyone. According to a report from CNN, of the users who got to try it out, most actually tweeted within 140 characters regardless, as the novelty wore off. That means that your Twitter feed may not end up being a wall of text — it just allows users to expand on their thoughts a little more.
Twitter arrived in 2006, and back then, founders seemed set on 140 characters. Even though users today are a little more anxious for an edit button (since, who hasn’t wanted to edit a tweet?) the limitation was a big issue for Twitter fans back in 2007, when the site — originally launched as “Twttr,” began to gain a bit of momentum.
some things can't be said in under 140 characters. especially after some champagne.
— jack (@jack) July 19, 2007
So, having this change roll out in 2017 is kind of a big deal. If you’ve logged on and don’t have it yet, here’s why.
It’s not because you’ve been left out — it’s because it’s a slow roll-out. That means that some users will get it before you, but it doesn’t mean you won’t be updated soon. Sadly, patience is key when it comes to big sites making major changes. If you use the app on your phone, you might also want to make sure there’s nothing you have to manually update — and, as usual, you may want to restart your phone to make sure you’re up to date.
In the meantime, while you wait, you could think of a few fun tweets you can send with this upgrade.
Now that this huge milestone has been achieved, fingers crossed that the edit button comes next.
