Twitter doubles the length of tweets to 280 characters for the first time
Until today, tweets were limited to 140 words, numbers and spaces. But now a small section of the social network's userbase have been given the ability to write longer messages for the first time
TWITTER has granted some of its users the ability to write tweets which are twice as long as its traditional 140 character messages.
A small percentage of the social network's 328 million users have been selected at random and granted the ability to write tweets which are 280 characters long.
This is a trial designed to allow people to express themselves at length.
It comes after Twitter conducted research which finds that 140 characters is too "constraining" to people who use certain languages.
In Japan, for instance, just 0.4% of tweets hit the 140 character limit because the language is more "dense" than others and conveys information in a smaller space.
However, about 9 percent of all messages written in English reach the character limit.
Aliza Rosen, Twitter product manager said: “We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter, so we're doing something new: we're going to try out a longer limit, 280 characters.
"In languages impacted by cramming (which is all except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean) Twitter is still about brevity.
"It's what makes it such a great way to see what's happening. Tweets get right to the point with the information or thoughts that matter.
"That is something we will never change.”