What You Should Know:
- Twitter’s character limit per tweet has extended from 140 characters to 280 characters.
- The extension is Twitter’s answer to user frustration with the original 140-character limit and the self-editing it would often impose.
- The new maximum applies to all accounts (including brands) in all languages, except for Chinese, Korean and Japanese, in which space isn’t as much of an issue.
- The new length won’t apply to ads created through Twitter’s self-serve platform (yet), but advertisers can post organic tweets using the new character limit and run those as Promoted Tweets
- The change has resulted in fewer instances where users are forced to cut down their tweets, with the percentage of English-written tweets hitting the maximum character limit dropping from 9% to 1%.
- Despite the new character limit, however, not many users are taking advantage of the new extension. Only 5% of all tweets published since Twitter began testing the 280-character cap in late September have exceeded the original 140-character cap.
Level Insight:
Just because you can say more in a promoted tweet doesn’t mean you must. The new character limit is great for those instances where an extra hashtag, link, emoji or even a few spaces could help your story stand out; however, it’s clear that active Twitter users still value concision. Use those additional characters where and when needed, but keep in mind that in the world of Twitter, less is usually more.
