News Digest

A picture tells a thousand characters: Twitter boss hints at longer tweets

Twitter users who struggle to stay inside the limits of their 140-character tweets could see that extended by thousands after the site’s co-founder hinted at change. Following reports the social networking site will employ a new feature allowing users to tweet up to 10,000 characters at a time, chief executive Jack Dorsey posted a message saying the company will not be “shy” about giving its users more power. Mr Dorsey sent a tweet after a report on technology website Re/Code suggested Twitter is currently considering upping the limit to 10,000, although he did not refer directly to the report in his message. He used a picture of text, containing 1,325 characters, to tell followers what may be in store.

We’re not going to be shy about building more utility and power into Twitter for people. As long as it’s consistent with what people want to do, we’re going to explore it.

Jack Dorsey

The current 140-character restriction was introduced in Twitter’s early days, in a similar way to short text messages, and while Mr Dorsey praised it as a “beautiful constraint” he noted that users already find ways to cram more into a tweet by posting images with more words. Such a move could be a good way to attract new users to the site, something it has struggled to do compared to other sites such as Facebook and Instagram, said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. He said: “Twitter is an afterthought in social media right now. They need to do something to drive more usage of the service. If people start using the service more frequently, other users will come join in, too.”