Twitter CEO Elon Musk hates anything which may have a ‘micro’ potential and that’s why all his bets in the last two decades have been large enough to make jaws drop. Now, he wants to remove the word ‘micro’ from the microblogging platform Twitter. He pledged once more to increase the tweet’s character limit. The proposed increase would be increased from 280 to 4000, which is more than 14x the current limit.
Musk has hinted about his plans for Twitter via his personal account. When asked by a Twitter user if it was true that Twitter will increase the number of characters from 280 upto 4000, Musk replied with three characters: “Yes.”
The billionaire has made it clear that Twitter will be increasing its character count to make it more expressive.
Although this is not the first time when Musk, the world’s richest person, has revealed his intention of increasing the character limit of a tweet, his tweet after acquiring Twitter comes with decision-making power. It was earlier reported that Musk was planning to increase the Tweet character limit from 240 characters to 1,000 characters only.
Given the unpredictive nature of Musk, it’s impossible to be certain of anything even after the launch of the rollout. However, for sure, Twitter will likely see a significant increase in a tweet’s character count.
Although there is no indication when Twitter’s character limit will be increased, Musk probably doesn’t consider it his top priority. Twitter has been struggling publicly since the new CEO assumed control. New features have been implemented quickly and layoffs have caused widespread chaos. Musk threatened to sue Twitter employees for speaking to the media over the weekend.
This is also not the first time when the character count of Twitter’s tweet could be increased. It was Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter, who doubled the character count from 140 characters to 280 in 2017. Since Twitter used to send posts (tweets) to accounts that you had followed via text messages in its earlier years, the original 140 character limit was based on SMS’ 160 characters limit. With the advent of smartphones, this limit became less relevant. In 2020 Twitter stopped providing SMS service to most countries.
Although many people were sceptical about Twitter’s move to 280 characters, they eventually became used to it. However, increasing Twitter’s character limit by 14 folds to 4,000 characters is far more than simply doubling it. It could change Twitter’s fundamental nature as a microblogging platform. Whatever the response from users be, Musk is on his course to redefine Twitter by revisiting each and every feature one after another.
It’s unclear if Musk plans to offer the increased Twitter character limit only to Twitter Blue subscribers. Musk is leaving no stone unturned to reduce the reliance of Twitter on ad dollars and make its paid subscriptions and features more appealing to its all-time-high 259 million users.
