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Twitter: Only Counting Your Words And Dumping @Name

Twitter is changing how it counts its 140 character tweet limit and it is literally saying Goodbye @. Goodbye, .@: These changes will help simplify the rules around Tweets that start with a username. ...
Twitter: Only Counting Your Words And Dumping @Name
Written by Staff
  • Twitter is changing how it counts its 140 character tweet limit and it is literally saying Goodbye @.

    Goodbye, .@: These changes will help simplify the rules around Tweets that start with a username. New Tweets that begin with a username will reach all your followers. (That means you’ll no longer have to use the ”.@” convention, which people currently use to broadcast Tweets broadly.) If you want a reply to be seen by all your followers, you will be able to Retweet it to signal that you intend for it to be viewed more broadly.

    Twitter wants to make tweets more meaningful and allow more consistency in how much you can say by only counting the characters of the words you intend to tweet. Twitter will no longer count characters within @name, links and the text related to attached video, images, articles and other media.

    So, you can already do a lot in a Tweet, but we want you to be able to do even more. In the coming months we’ll make changes to simplify Tweets including what counts toward your 140 characters, so for instance, @names in replies and media attachments (like photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) will no longer “use up” valuable characters. Here’s what will change:

    – Replies: When replying to a Tweet, @names will no longer count toward the 140-character count. This will make having conversations on Twitter easier and more straightforward, no more penny-pinching your words to ensure they reach the whole group.

    – Media attachments: When you add attachments like photos, GIFs, videos, polls, or Quote Tweets, that media will no longer count as characters within your Tweet. More room for words!

    Twitter also announced that they will be enabling the retweet button on your own tweets so that you can resend the tweet to your followers or retweet your own post with an added comment.

    These changes will be rolling out over the next few months and Twitter also hinted at even more changes in the works.

    In addition to the changes outlined above, we have plans to help you get even more from your Tweets. We’re exploring ways to make existing uses easier and enable new ones, all without compromising the unique brevity and speed that make Twitter the best place for live commentary, connections, and conversations.

    Twitter also responded, via tweet of course, to some questions from users:

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