Twitter, Inc. has announced the first major overhaul of site functionality, outlining plans to expand from the current 140-character message length to 141 characters. This is the first part of a five-year plan to extend the text limitation to 144 characters.
Officials at Twitter, Inc. announced that the change will be rolled out to users randomly over the next two weeks.
Over the years, weve noticed a severe lack of punctuation and were hoping this extra character will help facilitate better usage, said CEO Dick Costolo. I mean, for crying out loud, would it kill you to use a period at the end of a sentence?
After a successful rollout of the 141st character this year, Twitter will grow by one character per year for the next two years and then take a one-year hiatus before implementing the final two characters.
We understand the strain were putting on developers during this period of growth, said founder Jack Dorsey. That break is important to give them a chance to take a breather, re-acquaint themselves with the outside world, play a little foosball.
Were a family, added Dorsey. And much like when a family decides to have another child, were going to love our 141st character just as much as we love the 140 that came before it.
Whether or not that love is felt throughout the twitterverse remains to be seen. Initial reaction to the news has been mixed, with many long-time users claiming Twitter is selling out while others point out that most tweets dont resemble anything close to a sentence anyway, and adding a character does not a complete sentence make.
Some power users have already vowed not to utilize the 141st character and are trying to rally support for their boycott with the creation of the #justsaynoto141 and #keeptwttr140 hashtags. Conversely, Twitters large contingent of teenage female users say theyre excited to be able to squeeze in one more exclamation point.
We expect therell be some abuse of the extra character and well deal with those situations as they arise, said Dorsey. If you want to tell your 1,487 followers that what youre eating is delicious, Mmm will suffice. You dont need to go all Mmmm just because you can.
Dont pad the tweet, people, Dorsey added. A smart tweeter is a popular tweeter.
This story was originally published in CapNews. Read the full story here.
