Big Twitter changes let you say more with 140 characters

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Twitter
Twitter is going to stop counting the links in your tweets.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Twitter is rolling out some big changes that are going to change the way you tweet in the future. Users can now say more when tweeting others and posting media links, and it’s finally possible to retweet and quote yourself.

“You can already do a lot in a Tweet, but we want you to be able to do even more,” Twitter said in its announcement today. “In the coming months we’ll make changes to simplify Tweets including what counts toward your 140 characters.”

The biggest change is that @names and media links no longer count toward the 140-character limit for tweets, so when engaging in conversation with other users or posting photos, GIFs, videos, and polls, you’ll still have 140 characters to work with after entering a URL.

It will be easier to refer to your previous tweets, too, with the ability to retweet and quote tweet yourself. You’ll see both buttons on the bottom of your own tweets just like you do now for other people’s.

Finally, Twitter will now show new tweets that you send to other users to all of your followers, so you no longer have to put a period in front of the @name to make it visible to all. Only the first tweet will appear to all, however, so you’ll have to retweet others if you want to.

These changes will be hitting Twitter “over the coming months,” the company says. It is notifying developers and other partners today so that they can optimize their apps for the changes, and everything should work when the changes rollout.

Twitter says it is also working on other ways to make “existing uses easier and enable new ones, all without compromising the unique brevity and speed that make Twitter the best place for live commentary, connections, and conversations.”

Source: Twitter

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