Twitter Finally Stops Counting @replies Toward its 140-Character

Twitter Finally Stops Counting @replies Toward its 140-Character Tweet Limit Latest 2017

It's been a long time since Twitter said it would help users get the most out of their tweets by not having @replies as part of the 140 character limit. After a testing phase with a subset of users last October, the change eventually spread to everyone.

Talk about Twitter totally abandon your sacrosanct 140-tweet boundary character has met with the resistance of many people. Tweets are famous for their brevity - removing this attribute of definition could turn the site into another Facebook. As a compromise, Twitter stopped counting GIF, images, videos and quote tweets towards the character limit. Now, @replies joins that list.

In a blog, product manager Sasank Reddy explains the changes. When responding to others, the @usernames of those involved in the conversation will appear above your tweet, rather than within the body of the text.

In addition, you can now click on the "Reply to" field to display a list of all participants in the conversation. A check box system allows you to select the people you want from the list of responses. Although it has to be said that a "select/untag all" option would have been welcomed.

"The updates we are making today are based on feedback from all of you, as well as from research and experimentation. In our tests of this new experience, we found that people are more involved with Twitter conversations," Reddy writes.

In addition to allowing more space for Twitter content, Twitter says the new system makes it easy to track and engage in popular and extensive conversations. We certainly hope that the results of the change in the microb logging site becoming less confusing for the important new users.

It seems, however, many current Twitter users are not very happy with the update. The main complaint is that it makes everything more confusing, not less.