Elon Musk plans to expand 280-character limit, allow longer videos on Twitter

A phone screen displays a photo of Elon Musk with the Twitter logo shown in the background in Washington, DC. Pic/AFP

In a change for Twitter, Elon Musk said the microblogging platform will soon expand or even get rid of the 280-character limit.

He also confirmed that the company under him will look into increasing the length of videos so that users can post longer videos.

Responding to a user who asked if we can get rid of character limits, or at least greatly expand it, Musk said: "Absolutely".

Another user asked him about posting longer videos on Twitter, to which he said: "100 per cent".

Musk, who has acquired Twitter for $44 billion after a bitter battle, said in April this year that the micro-blogging platform needs long-form tweets which is "way overdue".

Twitter currently allows people to post in 280 characters.

Reacting to a follower's tweet thread, Musk said: "My most immediate takeaway from this novella of a thread is that Twitter is way overdue for long form tweets!"

Earlier, Musk demanded an Edit button, and the micro-blogging platform announced that it is working on such a feature that will allow users to correct errors in their tweets, albeit with some rules.

Twitter launched 280 characters in November 2017 to all users in supported languages, including English.

The company first announced the controversial plan to move beyond its traditional 140 characters in September 2017 with a small group of users.

Several Twitter users had argued that 280 characters would make Twitter less readable as the platform's defining characteristic is the brevity of posts.

However, Twitter's decision to double its character count from 140 to 280 characters did not dramatically change the length of Twitter posts.

According to the company, Twitter is still a place for briefer thoughts.

Only 1 per cent of tweets hit the 280-character limit, and only 12 per cent of tweets were longer than 140 characters, according to the data provided by the company a couple of years back. Only 5 per cent of tweets were longer than 190 characters.

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