Twitter users will have no doubt noticed something missing from their Direct Messages today: the limitation of 140 characters. With the removal of character limitation, users can now chat on (and on) in a single Direct Message, and likely still have some characters left over.
While Twitter is largely a public experience, Direct Messages allows users to have private conversations about the memes, news, movements, and events that unfold on Twitter. Each of the hundreds of millions of Tweets sent across Twitter every day is an opportunity for users to spark a conversation about what’s happening in the world.
This is why Twitter has made a number of changes to Direct Messages over the last few months, such as enabling an option to receive Direct Messages from anyone, and group Direct Messages. Today’s change is another big step towards making the private side of Twitter even more powerful and fun.
However, this change won’t impact on the public side of Twitter. Tweets will continue to be the 140 characters they are today, rich with commentary as well as photos, videos, links, Vines, gifs, and emoji.
Twitter will begin rolling out this change to Direct Messages today across both Android and iOS apps, on twitter.com, TweetDeck, and Twitter for Mac, and will continue to roll out worldwide over the coming weeks.
Users who cannot wait to try out longer Direct Messages should ensure that they have the latest versions of the apps to get the update immediately. Sending and receiving Direct Messages via SMS will still be limited.
