Elon Musk has been promising longer tweets for a while, and now, he has delivered. The social media company has introduced a longer tweet feature, giving ‘Twitter Blue’ users in the US the ability to compose and post up to 4000 characters at once. This is perfect on occasions when the current 280-character limit feels insufficient, and users have to resort to creating a thread of tweets instead.
According to a tweet by the company on Thursday, Twitter is bringing the ability to post longer tweets to users who have subscribed to its paid Blue service. It thus seems to be Musk’s latest attempt to milk more money out of the micro-blogging site – and with a much sought-after feature behind a paywall, this move might just play in Musk’s favor.
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
Of course, this is far from being the first time Twitter has expanded the length of posts on its platform. In 2017, it introduced the existing 280-character limit, replacing the previous limit of 140 characters. And while Blue subscribers can now type all the way up to 4,000 characters, they will be unable to save them as drafts or reschedule them for later. Most of the existing standard functions of tweeting remain unchanged – whether you want to post images or videos, use hashtags, or even create a poll (which Musk is known to do.
For those who are yet to subscribe to the service (Blue costs $11/month on iOS or Android, or $8/month on the web), it is not known when the ability to post longer tweets will reach them (if ever). They can, however, continue to read, reply, retweet, and quote Tweet to them. Additionally, Blue subscribers will be able to reply and quote a longer tweet with up to 4,000 characters, according to Twitter. And while longer tweets look like a good option, it also means a great deal of scrolling. Twitter has accounted for this problem, and it announced that long tweets will be capped at 280 characters on the timeline of other users. If they wish to read the full tweet, then they can click on the “Show more” prompt.
