I wonder how many systems, within Twitter and third-party API users, were broken by this change. I'm sure the 140 character limit is hardcoded, explicitly or implicitly, for things like buffer sizes or database schemas in tons of software.
I can respect the cachet that twitter has had throughout the world, and the wonderful, positive things its platform has enabled...But honestly, this kind of improvement is so late in coming. Long ago, they should have raised the character limit...Now, I know some might reply with, "but historically SMS/texting limits to X characters only...". My response to this, is that twitter could have adjusted their platform to gracefully degrade. That is, if users can only tweet messages limited to 140 characters because of limits on their device or limits of their infrastructure of submission, then that should not stop other users - who do not have such limits - from tweeting longer messages. Some might feel my comment has the benefit of hindsight, but actually many, many users have said as much during Twitters early years. So I'm not disclosing anything revolutionary or new.
For me the 140 character limit is a bit too little. Trying to squeeze my thoughts requires too much effort.<p>Even a small increase to for example 200 characters would make a big difference.
At least they actually added this into the API this time <a href="https://www.hitchhq.com/twitter/activities/upcoming-changes-to-tweets-57dfb6557ab5cb2d63b136c4" rel="nofollow">https://www.hitchhq.com/twitter/activities/upcoming-changes-...</a>
The title is misleading. Actual text:<p>"Rolling out now: photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and Quote Tweets no longer count toward your 140 characters."<p>Otherwise you could post a tweet with 141 URLs separated by 140 spaces, and only the spaces count.
My personal opinion is that Twitter still sticking to 140 characters is stupid. If there is still an argument to be made for emergency services using SMS, I'd like to counter that they could implement an "emergency mode twitter" that reverts back to 140 characters in case there is an emergency and only in regions concerned by and adjacent to the occurence of said emergency.<p>It's time they bump the character limit up to at least 512 characters.
What is the meaning of the 140 limit if this and that doesn't count toward it?<p>A 139 character message plus a 50 character uncounted URL won't pass through SMS. The 140 limit is from SMS. If you're going through SMS, meet the limit. If not, then chuck the limit, or pick another one. There is no way to rationalize any half assing like counting only these kinds of tokens or substrings in the message against a 140 limit but not others.