Twitter removes photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and quote tweets from 140-character limit

Twitter users rejoice, for now you can now say more in your tweets. The social media company announced on Monday that it has followed through on a promise made months ago: no longer counting photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and quote tweets in its 140 character limit. However, links remain part of the Twitter count.

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/777915304261193728

Today’s announcement comes days after a report from The Verge claiming that Twitter would make this significant move to improve the overall user experience. While the company remains adamant that it’s not eliminating its 140 character count, the elimination of additional media from a tweet might hopefully encourage more usage, streamlining things so users, particularly new ones, won’t become frustrated having to try and cram everything they’re thinking into a short message.

Although not mentioned in Twitter’s tweet, the company is also testing out some changes with replies, such as no longer counting @names towards the character count. In May, Twitter announced it was removing the pesky “.@” convention, but now it looks like the service is going a bit further to add more text to your tweet. Below is a GIF showing what that would look like:

Above: GIF showing how Twitter is testing out replies without counting the username.

Image Credit: Twitter

“One of the biggest priorities for this year is to refine our product and make it simpler,” Dorsey said previously in a statement. “We’re focused on making Twitter a whole lot easier and faster. This is what Twitter is great at — what’s happening now, live conversation and the simplicity that we started the service with.”

As the service moves more into its strategy around live events, removing obstacles that would prevent or frustrate users from tweeting is required. The latest changes may not seem like much, but it is significant in that it simplifies what makes Twitter … Twitter.

Now that we have this out of the way, what about an edit button, or even perhaps do something more relating to harassment and user safety?