In an effort to boost popularity, Twitter experiments with new 280-character tweet limit

Twitter is currently testing a new feature which would allow tweets to be expanded to 280 characters, double the existing limit, in yet another effort to boost flagging growth at the social network. At the moment, a small group of users will see the new limits before the company decides on rolling out the changes globally.

Product manager Aliza Rosen and senior software engineer Ikuhiro Ihara said in a blog post, “We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter, so we're doing something new: we're going to try out a longer limit, 280 characters, in languages impacted by cramming (which is all except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean).”

This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence! https://t.co/TuHj51MsTu

— jack (@jack) September 26, 2017

Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey stated that though this could be a small change, it is a big move for the company. He said, “140 was an arbitrary choice... Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet.”

However, the company plans to leave the old limit in place for tweets in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean because internal data showed written characters in those languages packed plenty into the allotted space.

The platform reported a net loss of $116 million in the second quarter, slightly wider than its $107 million loss a year ago. On the other hand, platforms like Instagram are growing rapidly and have already crossed a user base of 800 million.