For Twitter, it’s been a weird couple of years. There are lots of rumors swirling of Twitter’s demise, but I think that is a really, really remote possibility.
Still, you can’t say that Twitter is what it was. It has changed a lot over the past 8 years since I joined it. For me, the main difference is around conversations–they happen much less frequently than they used to.
There have been many rumors about how Twitter is going to change, and some of them were not good. We heard, for example, that they were going to abandon the 140-character limit entirely. This, to me, is a terrible idea. 140 characters is what makes Twitter, well, Twitter, so getting rid of that would be a mistake.
There are changes coming to Twitter, and they are, in all honesty, not bad. Here’s a breakdown of the new Twitter changes:
Certain media will no longer count towards your 140 characters. So, you will be able to attach:
- up to 4 images
- a 30 second video
- a poll
- a GIF
and these will not count towards your 140-characters.
When you are replying to someone, their @handle will also no longer count towards the 140 characters. This is great news, and hopefully it will lead to more Twitter conversations online. I believe that Twitter’s goal for this particular rule is to encourage more conversations.
The dot is going to become obsolete. You may know that if you start a tweet with an @mention, that tweet is not public. Only your shared followers (the people that follow both you and the person you’re @mentioning) will see that tweet. In the new twitter update, tweets that start with an @mention will now be public, making .@mentions obsolete.
When are they coming? According to Twitter, they will “roll out over the coming months.”
Here’s a handy-dandy infographic that breaks it all down for you:
Infographic courtesy of Zoho Social.
