Twitter are making some changes to its platform in the coming weeks and users are delighted at the prospect. Which gives a nice change to the usual uproar from users when any social platform announce changes. It’s being reported that the platform are planning to eliminate the character limit in place for links and photos within a tweet.
Twitter saw the birth of micro blogging. With its 140 character post limit it meant people weren’t bombarded with lengthy posts, instead giving people bite sized information that they actually wanted. From its initial conception Twitter has come a long way even becoming a useful online marketing tool.
In order to stay relevant in the ever changing tech sector Twitter need to regularly update the platform and introduce changes that will benefit users. Rumours began to circulate in January that Twitter where planning to change the 140 character limit to 10,000 characters. People were less than excited by this news, seeing it as complete switch from the original concept and taking away the one thing that differentiated Twitter from other platforms. Rumours were quenched later by CEO Jack Dorsey who said they were keeping the 140 limit.
While users breathed a sigh of relief upon that news, the latest news has people much more excited. It seems that they are planning on eliminating the character limit for photos and links. Any avid twitter user has most likely had the issue when they try to post a photo with what they perceive as a hilarious caption only to be faced with the dreaded 0 telling them they have no characters left to complete their tweet. As of now links to other sites and photo URLs are counted as characters within a tweet, taking up a minimum of 23 characters. The change would give Twitter users a lot more freedom when it comes to what they want to say along with a link or photo. This change is set to be released in as little as two weeks.
Many twitter users were delighted to hear the news of the latest change, with the only negativity coming from the fact that users believe this should have been implemented a number of years ago. We won’t know the reasoning behind why it has taken them so long to implement a feature that users have wanted for years, but it is a positive step for the company, which some might argue is much needed. People are beginning to speculate at the lifetime of Twitter, with many people saying the platform in its current state can’t last. It has been claimed that Twitter execs don’t know where to go next, or how to add innovation to the existing platform to enhance user experience and gain revenue.
Twitter seem to be at a standstill of around 300 million users. While this seems like a large number, there are most likely a number of these users that are not actively using the service on a daily basis, which is what Twitter needs in order to sell ad space. While they reported a profit at the end of 2015 their stock price fell by 36%, and experts believe without new users Twitter can’t sustain any level of profitability. When compared to Facebooks 1 billion users, with plans to continue to grow, Twitter cannot compete.
So without innovation and new users, the question arises, how long will Twitter last? While it is certain that they won’t go down without a fight, without a significant revenue stream they can’t afford to pay people to keep the company running, and without them there is no Twitter. However this is just speculation, the new change to the character limit could just be the first in a long line of changes that the company are about to roll out, and users old and new may just start flocking towards a revitalised Twitter.
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