ShortList is supported by you, our amazing readers. When you click through the links on our site and make a purchase we may earn a commission. Learn more

Longer Tweets will arrive this month

Twitter is changing the way it counts those 140 characters

Longer Tweets will arrive this month
13 September 2016

Been struggling to fit your pithy reactions to Great British Bake Off into 140 characters? Twitter feels your pain - and is finally doing something about it.

The Verge has confirmed that from 19 September, the system of counting characters in Tweets will change: images, videos, polls, GIFs and quoted Tweets will no longer be included in your 140 character limit.

Twitter has been knocking the notion of longer Tweets around since 2015, when Jack Dorsey rejoined the struggling company he had established as CEO. Having hinted at removing the limit altogether, Twitter then dropped a character cap for Direct Messages, before changing the manner in which Tweets counted links and images. 

The new change, as reported by The Verge, will see Twitter stick to its "beautiful" constraint of 140 characters, but not penalise users from attempt to add more media to their messages.

As to whether the change will help Twitter turn around its struggling finances? We'll have to wait and read the Tweets about it.