New Delhi: Elon Musk on Sunday said Twitter may soon expand or even get rid of the platform’s 280-character limit.
He also confirmed that the company under his leadership will look into increasing the length of videos so that users can post longer videos.
In response to a user who asked if we could get rid of character limits or at least significantly expand them, Musk said, “Absolutely.”
Another user asked him about posting longer videos on Twitter, to which he said, “100 percent.”
Musk, who acquired Twitter for $44 billion after a bitter battle, said in April this year that the microblogging platform needed long-form tweets, which were “long overdue.”
Twitter currently allows people to post in 280 characters.
Responding to a follower’s tweet thread, Musk said, “My most immediate takeaway from this novella thread is that Twitter is way overdue for long-form tweets!”
Musk had previously requested an edit button, and the microblogging platform announced that it was working on such a feature that would allow users to correct errors in their tweets, albeit with some rules.
Twitter rolled out 280 characters in November 2017 for all users in supported languages, including English.
The company first announced the controversial plan to go beyond the traditional 140 characters in September 2017 with a small group of users.
Several Twitter users argued that 280 characters would make Twitter less readable, as the defining characteristic of the platform is the brevity of posts.
However, Twitter’s decision to double the character limit from 140 to 280 characters did not dramatically change the length of Twitter posts.
According to the company, Twitter is still a place for shorter thoughts.
Only 1 percent of tweets hit the 280-character limit, and only 12 percent of tweets are longer than 140 characters, according to data provided by the company a few years ago. Only 5 percent of tweets are longer than 190 characters.
(IANS)