Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 28-09-2017

Social media platform Twitter says it would begin a test with a random sample of users allowing them to send tweets that are as long as 280 characters, double the existing cap, in most languages around the world.

The San Francisco-based company has stood by its short messages as a defining characteristic – like chirps from a bird, which is the company logo – even as users found ways around the limit, such as posting photos of text.

In a blog post on Tuesday, Twitter project manager Aliza Rosen and senior software engineer Ikuhiro Ihara said its emphasis on brevity would never change but that it had been wondering whether people could express themselves easily enough, hurting the service’s popularity.

“Trying to cram your thoughts into a Tweet – we’ve all been there, and it’s a pain.”

The employees acknowledged some users may have an “emotional attachment” to the current limit.

In January 2016 Twitter said it was running internal tests for longer tweets and considering a limit as high as 10,000 characters.

Though Twitter is ubiquitous in media because of frequent use by US President Donald Trump and many celebrities, the company has struggled financially.

Twitter says the test of 280 characters will run for an unspecified number of weeks in all languages except Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

The company declined to say how many people would be included in the test.

The 140-character limit originated from the use of SMS text messages. Twitter’s founders, including Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, wanted a limit just below the SMS cap of 160 characters.

Twitter: @FaizelPatel143