Twitter will remove direct message character limit

It looks like very soon; all the Twitter addicts will be able to send much longer direct messages! The site has made plans to remove the character limit of 140, but only on its direct messaging feature.

The news was announced on the company’s blog on its developer forum on Thursday. Starting from July, the 140 character limit on direct messages will be gone. The character limit for regular tweets, which is also 140, will still remain in place though.

Twitter’s product manager for direct messages, wrote “You may be wondering what this means for the public side of Twitter, nothing! Tweets will continue to be the 140 characters they are today.”

Early on in Twitter’s life the ability to chat privately with other users was added, but it has never been a core feature of the service. Instead users came to Twitter to share short updates publicly with their followers. Now, there is growing competition from many other social networks, like Facebook and WhatsApp, so Twitter is looking to keep up and make messaging a bigger deal!

The move is actually the latest in a series of major changes the company has made to direct messages over the past year. Twitter announced group messaging features into the service in January. The network also added an option that allows users to opt-in to receive private messages from anyone else on the service.

The limit is no longer necessary in the age of smartphones and Twitter apps, but the social network has kept it around to encourage you to keep your messages short. So, getting rid of the limit is just another step in the right direction!

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