Twitter finally ditches usernames from its character limit
Twitter has changed how replies, photos, GIFs and links count towards its limit
Earlier this year, Twitter stopped counting the likes of photos, GIFs and quote tweets as part of an individual tweet's character limit. Now it's gunning for usernames.
In a limited test, "appearing to a subset of users" on iOS, the Twitter handles of people mentioned in replies are no longer included. Instead, a greyed-out line appears at the top of the tweet which says: "Replying to [username]."
A Twitter spokesperson confirmed the test and on an official support post about tweets not displaying properly, the firm wrote: "If you notice a tweet that includes more than 140 characters, the tweet may come from an account that is in a test group experimenting with our changes to the way replies happen on Twitter.
"When this change launches to the public, people’s usernames will no longer be automatically included in tweet text and they will no longer count towards a tweet's 140 characters."
It did not elaborate on when this change would occur or when the update will begin rolling out.
This latest update forms part of a wave of changes being made to character limits, initially announced in May and implemented in September.
Before the change, attachments added 24 characters to the length of a tweet, but Twitter dropped this limit in a bid to attract more users to the network.
In a tweet at the time, Twitter wrote: "Say more about what's happening! Rolling out now: photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and Quote Tweets no longer count toward your 140 characters."
"One of the things we were hearing from [users] was that it was a frustration when a video or a photo or a GIF, or a handle in a reply was taking up some of their 140 characters," Dara Nasr, Twitter's UK managing director, told WIRED. "Because they're not part of the narrative of the tweet, they're just an attachment, we thought we could remove that".
In February, Twitter switched from using entirely chronological timelines to a partly-algorithmic system that bumped certain tweets to the top of timelines to enable users to catch up on tweets from their favourite users that they might have missed. Despite the inevitable tweetstorm in response to the changes, just two per cent of users have opted out of the non-chronological timeline.
This move, and the latest changes to character limits, are part of Twitter's response to stagnant growth and falling stock prices. Last year, Twitter announced it was laying off eight per cent of its entire workforce after slow user growth lead to a 20 per cent drop in stock price. Twitter's latest quarterly update showed that monthly active user figures in the US continue to show zero growth, while in the rest of the world user numbers are growing slowly.
"What we don't want to do is totally change our product – what we want to do is take a great product and make it even greater," Nasr told WIRED.
Last week, the site rolled out read receipts for its Direct Messages, link previews and typing indicators too, pitting it directly against the likes of WhatsApp.
How tweets are changing
Attachments: embedded attachments such as photos, GIFs, videos, polls or quote tweets will no longer count towards the 140-character limit
Retweets: the retweet button will be enabled on your own tweets so users can re-share older or unloved tweets
Replies: when replying to tweets, Twitter handles will no longer count towards the character limit
Goodbye to .@: new tweets that begin with a username will appear in the timeline of all you followers, meaning you no longer need to use .@username. Replies to that tweet will only be seen by you, or by people that follow you and the person replying to your tweet.