Starting today, Twitter will allow you to write 280 characters in a single tweet. The new change is rolling out and it will cover all supported languages. The initial plan to expand the characters from 140 to 280 was first announced in September. The social media platform noted at the time that the expansion was aimed at helping Twitter users express themselves better without running out of characters.

You can now write up to 280 characters in a single tweet. Source: Emerging Ed Tech

A trial was conducted immediately featuring a select group of Twitter users. Twitter said that there was data evidence that showed that character limits constrained people differently depending on their language. The evidence showed that Twitter users who tweeted in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean were actually able to express themselves better using fewer characters compared to people who tweeted in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and French.

Because of this, the expansion of characters will only be rolled out to users who use these constrained languages. In other words, all languages other than Korean, Chinese, and Japanese will be eligible for the character expansion.

Not all languages will be eligible for the character expansion. Source: Click How To

The move to expand the character limit has met some criticism. Many have argued that this will make tweets longer and therefore harder to read. Some people have also accused the social media platform of introducing a feature that nobody asked for and in the process ignoring a number of key issues raised by users recently. Issues like bullying, harassment, and rampant abuses on the social media platform are vital yet it seems very little has been done to address them.

There is also the argument that the expansion of characters will not help users express themselves better. It will only allow people to say the same thing only that this time they will use more words. The reactions towards character expansion appear mixed. A poll done last month found that more Americans favored the expansion of characters compared to those who did not. However, the majority of the people interviewed in the survey did not have an opinion.

In a poll, opinions about the character expansion were mixed. Source: Tweeting Too Hard

The biggest challenge for Twitter will be to convince users that the character expansion will not fill up their timelines with long and expanded tweets. The social media platform observed that during the trial run, the majority of users continued to tweet below the 140 characters despite having the option to go beyond this. The trial run showed that only 5% of tweets went above 140 characters. In addition to this, only 2% of tweets were above 190 characters. Tweets that went up to 280 characters during the trial run accounted for a mere 1% of the total.

However, the sample size used in this trial is very small. We can’t draw conclusions from the trial now that the expansion is rolling out to the majority of users on the social media platform. But it will be interesting to see just how many people will go above the initial 140 character limit and how many will actually hit 280. After all, Twitter feels that the character expansion will help people express themselves better. Let’s see if they do!