You can now send longer tweets on Twitter if you are subscribed to Twitter Blue, or more specifically your tweets are not limited to 4,000 characters.
Twitter has recently made a significant change to its platform by allowing Twitter Blue subscribers in the United States to post tweets up to 4,000 characters in length. This is a departure from the standard-length tweets that Twitter has been known for, which typically have a character limit of 280. The longer tweets will be displayed in the main feed at standard length and users will have to click on a “Show more…” link to access the rest of the content.
Longer tweets on the platform were announced by the official Twitter Blue account.
need more than 280 characters to express yourself?
we know that lots of you do… and while we love a good thread, sometimes you just want to Tweet everything all at once. we get that.
so we're introducing longer Tweets! you're gonna want to check this out. tap this 👉… https://t.co/lge9udRzLE
— Twitter Blue (@TwitterBlue) February 8, 2023
Twitter has stated that the new feature will apply to quote tweets and replies as well, while other standard functionalities such as posting media, creating polls, and using hashtags will still be available. The catch is that only Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to create longer tweets, although anyone will be able to read them.
Longer tweets were being talked about with the announcement of Twitter 2.0
Elon Musk, who is the chief of Twitter 2.0, seems to be convinced that the introduction of longer tweets will open up new avenues for monetization. He believes that users will be more likely to post long-form content on the platform, thereby attracting more top voices to the app. This theory is exemplified by the recent Twitter Files, where a team of journalists picked by Elon went through Twitter’s archives to uncover instances of corruption and government meddling. They then posted their findings in long tweet threads, which could have been more fitting for a long-form format but were instead posted on Twitter.
Don’t know what is Twitter 2.0? Check out our writing titled Twitter 2.0 explained by Elon Musk.
However, the decision to limit this new feature to Twitter Blue subscribers only seems short-sighted. Only a small portion of Twitter’s 250 million total user base has a blue tick and is paying for the service, and it’s hard to see this number significantly increasing in the near future. This means that a lot of popular creators won’t even be able to use the option, which seems counterintuitive. It’s possible that Elon has a broader plan to add a new monetization element that users will have to pay for in order to qualify for longer tweets, but only time will tell.
Overall, the introduction of longer tweets on Twitter is a significant departure from the platform’s usual offering, and it remains to be seen whether it will be well received by users. While it could potentially make it easier to post multi-tweet threads in a more engaging way, it could also turn out to be a complete flop. Regardless, it’s a bold move by Twitter, and it will be interesting to see how it develops in the coming months.
Twitter could not handle the load
Twitter experienced several hours of downtime after introducing a new 4,000-character limit. In the afternoon on Wednesday, users were unable to post tweets and received either an error message or a message saying “You are over the daily limit for sending Tweets.” However, users were still able to post tweets by scheduling them through the web app, which seemed to have bypassed the issue.
Some users were unable to view their messages and noticed that only verified accounts appeared in their feeds. From around 4 p.m. ET, Down Detector received numerous reports of the outage.
Twitter Blue subscribers were given the ability to post tweets with up to 4,000 characters earlier in the day, which is likely connected to the outage. A leaked email from Twitter CEO Elon Musk to Twitter staff stated that they should “pause for now on new feature development in favor of maximizing system stability and robustness, especially with the Super Bowl coming up”.
