Remember when everyone got up in arms about Twitter potentially expanding tweets beyond 140 characters? That was a great day on Twitter, but it turns out all of that anger (like quite a lot of it on Twitter) was misplaced, since that won’t be happening now and possibly ever.
On NBC’s Today show of all places, CEO Jack Dorsey said the company has no plans to expand Tweets beyond 140 characters, despite the persistent rumors that was going to happen for the past two months.
“It’s staying,” he said in an interview with host Matt Lauer. “It’s a good constraint for us, and… it allows for of-the-moment for everything.”
Twitter is approaching its 10th birthday and Dorsey returned last year to be the CEO after being the first chief executive for the company. He also wrote the very first Tweet.
just setting up my twttr
— jack (@jack) March 21, 2006
That ain’t the San Diego Chargers official account yearning for P.F. Chang’s, but it’s kinda close. Dorsey also said that Twitter does not censor users, although the site did remove a video from ISIS that personally threatened him.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “Twitter has always been about controls. People can follow who they want, and it’s our job to make sure they see the most important things.”
Twitter is wrestling with how to evolve in the marketplace as its active user base decreases and other social media sites like Facebook lap it on the stock exchange. They’ve recently introduced the algorithmic timeline, which promotes what an algorithm thinks you want to see instead of the reverse-chronological timeline everyone loves (it’s turned on automatically in the settings, but you can toggle it off, and you should), and they’ve recently worked with Giphy to tie in a GIF library to the site.
But the 140-character limit isn’t going anywhere.
[Variety]
