Here's what you need to know about Twitter's new character limit update

Xeni Jardin 10:06 pm Mon Sep 19, 2016

Reuters

Twitter has been struggling to attract new users and retain existing ones. In a long-awaited update for the social network, Twitter announced today that video, still images, animated GIFs, polls, and quotes will no longer apply to the 140-character limit for tweets.

Say more about what's happening! Rolling out now: photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and Quote Tweets no longer count toward your 140 characters. pic.twitter.com/I9pUC0NdZC

— Twitter (@twitter) September 19, 2016

So while you're still limited to the same old 140 characters for each tweet, just like it's been for a long time, there's no penalty of sorts for attaching media or interactive elements to your tweet. Meaning you can, in a sense, say more.

Links you may want to include in your tweet still count. That seems like an odd choice to me. If all of these other attachments and Twitter Polls don't count, why would URLs?

Twitter announced the big news on, where else, Twitter. They also tweeted a GIF that indicated they're testing a new reply format that will leave out the user names of people you reply to, even if you're replying to multiple usernames.

Here's that GIF from Twitter, below.

ezgif-1117983122

[Verge, VOA, Guardian, Adweek]

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