Twitter Abandons 140-Character Limit For DMs

Update: A little behind schedule, Twitter announced that the official demise of the 140-character DM limit will begin rolling out today, August 12. Now, you're private Twitter chats can be short and sweet, or lengthy novels (if you choose). The 140-character limit on normal public tweets remains unchanged. Twitter's finally addressing one of its most annoying issues: The 140-character limit in direct messages. Starting this July, you'll finally be able to tweet DMs of any length to friends and followers. It's a smart move for Twitter, and one that makes the service far more convenient for users. We can't count how many times we've had to split up one thought into three or five 140-character DMs, and then received multi-message responses back in return. With the constrictive limit, it was usually easier just to chat in other apps, like Messages or WhatsApp. By eliminating the strict character count, Twitter will be able to keep users in the app longer (and, ideally, make some much-needed money off those users, too). You'll now be able to use DMs more like you would any other messaging app. Twitter is not changing the 140-character count on regular tweets, however. The app's defining limitation stays the same — and that's just as well. It's part of what makes Twitter, well, Twitter. But, at least now you'll be able to exchange private messages on the app in a way that makes sense, instead of conversing in the virtual version of a telegram. This article originally appeared June 12, 2015.