Twitter is testing 280-character tweets

You will soon be able to be more expressive on Twitter. The popular micro-blogging website has started testing 280 character tweets, doubling the previous character limit. Earlier the limit was 140 characters and not everyone was comfortable expressing their views, and with the latest move Twitter aims to address "a major cause of frustration" of many users.

According to Twitter, they want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter, and the better way to do so is try out a longer limit of 280 characters, in languages impacted by cramming except for Japanese, Chinese and Korean.These three languages let you convey about double the amount of information in one character as you can in many other languages, like English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French. 

Twitter’s data shows that 0.4% of Tweets sent in Japanese arrive at the 140 character limit, compared to nine percent for English.  Most Japanese Tweets are 15 characters while most English Tweets are 34.

Twitter is currently testing the 280 character limit with few users, and would roll out to all if the testing is successful. Earlier Twitter stopped counting photos, videos, quote tweets and polls  against the 140 character limit of tweets. 

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