Twitter trials 280 character limit so users can “express themselves”

In the blog post Dorsey shared, Twitter’s Product Manager, Aliza Rosen states that 9% of all English spoken people reach the 140 character limit and often find themselves not being able to include everything they would like to say in a 140 character tweet. However, this isn’t the case for everyone. 0.4% of Japanese people reach the 140 character limit, and the majority of tweets in Japanese only contain 15 characters.

Despite the 140 character limit not being an issue to everyone, Rosen and the Twitter team wanted to please everyone hence why they are giving this new feature a try.

However, since Dorsey broke the news - several 280 character tweets have been tweeted - and there has been a lot of backlash. The majority of Twitter users are not happy with the character limit being doubled.

We moaned about not having enough characters & now we are getting more, users aren't happy.

Is it really such a bad idea?

In my opinion, 280 characters could work brilliantly - especially for small businesses!

• Firstly, you can say a whole lot more! You have 280 characters to promote your company in the best way that you can.
• It could extremely increase your brand awareness due to the longevity of the posts. More people are going to see you on their timeline.
• The more people that see you on your timeline will increase your engagement rate & visibility through follows, likes, RT's, link clicks, and media views.
• Brand awareness and engagement rate will most importantly increase your sales!

It's a win, win situation!

Yeah, so it's not really that bad, is it? You're still getting a limit of what you can say.

I understand it will take time to get used to, and reading your timeline will take a lot longer than normal, but don't rule it out - it could be a real benefit to you or your company.

What are your thoughts on the new character limit? Tweet me at @wearegecko! 

- Gillian