Twitter to double tweet length to 280 characters

Speakers: Li Ningjing and Sam Duckett

[photo: from stock.tuku.com]

After a research found frustration among users, Twitter decided to expand the character limit of a tweet from 140 to 280 for some users to improve their experience.

Chief Executive Office Jack Dorsey confirmed the change to the current restriction that has been in place since the San Francisco-based company was founded in 2006.

He said, "This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit."

According to the company, the update will cover certain languages such as English, Spanish, Portuguese and French.

Chinese, Korean and Japanese will not be included, because the company believed that with same characters, those languages can convey more information and emotion than Roman characters do.

The company is testing the new feature with a small group among its 328 million users before deciding whether to launch it to everyone. 

The audio clip is from Studio+, produced by CRI.