Last month the reactive social media platform
Twitter rolled out tests to double its character limit from 140 characters to
280 characters. After one month of testing on a select few, Twitter are soon
ready to roll out this mass overhaul to all of its 330,000,000 users. So why
has Twitter decided to do this?
Why?
In recent years the general number of tweets being
posted have decreased however impressions are still as healthy as ever. There
is nowhere more evident of this than when comparing the Tweet activity of
Superbowl 2015 with Superbowl 2016. According to a March 2016 article on The
Drum, Superbowl 2015 saw 36m tweets sent compared to Superbowl 2016 which saw
27m. However, Superbowl 2015 saw 2.5 billion impressions whereas Superbowl 2016
saw 4.3 billion - a 72% increase in people seeing tweets.
Therefore, Twitter is no longer about what is being
posted but what is being read. Perhaps encouraging people to post more often is
the reason for Twitter’s multiple attempts to alter their character limit over
the past few years.
In September 2016, Engadget talked about Twitter's
decision to remove the character limit reduction that occurred automatically
when including images, videos and gif’s. The cost of including content was 23
less characters for the post copy thus sacrificing valuable descriptive text
opportunities. Brands couldn’t waste a single character when getting their
messaging across to their audiences and the content attached, as well as being
eye catching, also had to have an easily digestible message
Due to limited opportunity to express information
with words, creative ways of delivering messages and evoking emotion
flourished. This was not just a necessity for posting content, but also for
community management. Gif’s have been a hugely popular form of expression by
brands through community management, creating a fun and humanised approach to
corporate issues such as customer service to help increase brand loyalty.
Then in March earlier this year, Wired UK reported
on another decision by Twitter to exclude handles in the 140 character limit
meaning users had more characters to express their thoughts and opinions.
It seems Twitter have exhausted all options to
allow their users to say more on their platform with the decision being to
finally increase the iconic 140-character limit.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
1.
Quite simply, you can say more!
It will be easier for both brands and people to publish more information with
more characters.
2.
This in turn could lead to the
decrease of chain tweets. Key information can be found in one place instead of
sifting through multiple replies on a tweet chain.
3.
It will give brands and marketers the
flexibility to engage more with their audiences and give brands a broader
opportunity to exchange information with their customers.
Cons:
1.
Wasn’t the whole point of Twitter to
publish information in a clear, concise and digestible form? What’s the point
in using ten words when one word will do the job?
2.
People won’t have to be as creative
with their tweets as there is a greater opportunity to say exactly what you
need to. Twitter has always been more of a text based platform but could this
signal the decrease of content production on the platform?
3.
Is doubling the amount of characters
swinging the pendulum too far in the opposite direction and allowing
people/brands to say too much?
This is a brave step from Twitter, this action
could be seen as re-writing the current functionality of the platform as it
currently exists. The future of content on the channel will be interesting to
witness as, according to a March 2017 study by Cisco, 75% of mobile traffic
will be video by 2020.
So it seems as always, only time will tell!
