Twitter is changing, again.
The 140-character limit has always been Twitter's precious crown, it is the defining feature which keeps its content so interesting.
Unfortunately over the years those characters have been stolen by live video, links, photos, GIFs and usernames for replies.
Well Twitter is wiping the slate clean and bringing the focus back to those 140-characters.
Here's what's changing:
Replies:
When replying to people, @names will no longer count towards your 140-character limit.
Attachments:
Photos, GIFs, videos, polls or Quoted tweets will no longer count towards your 140-character limit.
Conversations:
The '.@' convention is no more. Instead any new tweet that starts with an @name will now be seen by all your followers as standard. Any subsequent replies however will be treated as a normal Twitter conversation and so will only be shown to people that follow both you and the person you're talking to. Now if you want those tweets broadcast to the world you'll need to employ Twitter's last and final new feature...
Retweet/Quote:
You can now Retweet or Quote your own tweets should you want to highlight a point you made earlier or broadcast a conversation you're having with someone to all your followers.
They seem fairly straightforward though we can imagine there's going to be some confusion over how conversations are going to work on Twitter going forward.
The simple thing to remember is that the first Tweet you send with an @name at the beginning will be the equivalent of you shouting to that person across the office.
If they then reply, Twitter will automatically place you both in a 'meeting room' where only you two and people that follow both of you can hear what's going on.
Twitter says that the changes will be rolling out in the next couple of months, unfortunately it doesn't have anything more specific than that so your best bet is to just keep an eye out.
Recently the social media site has undergone a series of serious changes as it looks to diversify what it can offer in order to bring in more followers.
From the addition of Moments, a news feed of tweets, to the swapping of the favourite button for a 'like' button.