Social media was quick to push back against a report that Twitter is expanding its 140-character limit to 10,000 — but is it true?
The face of social media is about to get much louder and much longer thanks to a change to Twitter’s character policy. But should you believe the reports out there that Twitter is expanding it’s character limit or is it all another technological hoax that has stirred the masses over nothing?
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Twitter is going to expand from 140-characters to 10,000-chracters.
Twitter users were quick lambast this change — for obvious, headache inducing reasons — but there was another faction that tried to pass this off as a hoax.
Is it a Twitter hoax?
Sadly, it’s not. Twitter is indeed expanding its character limit to 10,000 characters, but that doesn’t mean they’re abandoning the old model. Your level of outrage is really based on how much you believe in the honor system — which is essentially what Twitter is using to quell the fear that their platform is about to get very crowded.
Twitter is going to alert you that you are over the original 140-character limit but will allow 9,860 more characters after that before you’re truly cut off. This has everyone worried that Twitter is about to become the new Facebook — which is a real fear that we won’t see addressed until this actually all happens.
It’s supposed to happen sometime in March, but if you’re worried about the character limit, you should try DM’ing someone on Twitter. That character limit was raised to 10,000 last summer, which flew under the radar but was a test that clearly passed.