Twitter, for the first time, increases the character limit except for few languages

Twitter, the popular social networking service, has finally increased its character limit. The website earlier had a limit of 140 characters and it has now been doubled up to 280 characters. However, users tweeting in certain languages like Chinese, Japanese and Korean will be restricted to the same old 140 characters limit as those languages use fewer characters.

The website made a tweet stating, "We're expanding the character limit! We want it to be easier and faster for everyone to express themselves."

The social networking site claims that 9 percent of the tweets made in English hit the 140 character limit. Twitter believes that increasing the character limit will be helpful in getting more people to tweet and will ultimately help it to increase its user base. Twitter has also stopped counting polls, photos, videos and other things toward the limit in order to fit in more characters into that single tweet.

Aliza Rosen, Product Manager said in a blog post that the test showed most people still used 140 characters or fewer, suggesting the fast-moving nature of Twitter will not change.

"Our goal was to make this possible while ensuring we keep the speed and brevity that makes Twitter, Twitter," Rosen said. "We're excited to share we’ve achieved this goal and are rolling the change out to all languages where cramming was an issue," he further added.

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Originally Twitter started the character limit so that the tweets can easily fit into a text message. People earlier used text messages to receive tweets and 140 characters were easy to send in one go. The company finally decided to increase the limit as now most people use the mobile app instead of the old-fashioned text messages.