Twitter has announced that it will raise the 140-character limit in direct messages to 10,000 characters next month, allowing users to conduct longer private conversations on the social network.
Until now, the limit on direct messages has been the same as the limit on public tweets, forcing people to send several messages in a row if they are unable to get everything they want to say into 140 characters.
The change, which will be made in July, is likely to make the direct messaging function on Twitter a lot more like Facebook Messenger – which many people now use as an alternative to email for keeping up with friends.
"You may be wondering what this means for the public side of Twitter. Nothing!" wrote Sachin Agarwal, product manager for direct message at Twitter, in a developer blog post. "Tweets will continue to be the 140 characters they are today."
The news comes after Twitter introduced a new option in April that allows users to receive direct messages from people they don't follow. Previously, users could only direct message people they followed, and who followed them back.
Twitter said the change helps users connect more easily to the people, causes and businesses they care about. Users can choose whether or not they want to receive messages from strangers using the site’s privacy settings.
Earlier this year, Twitter also introduced group messaging, allowing users to have private conversations with groups of their followers simultaneously. The members of a group do not all need to follow one another in order to chat.
Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo announced last night that he wasstepping down, after coming under pressure following lacklustre financial results. He will be replaced in the interim by co-founder Jack Dorsey.
According to Jason Mander, Head of Trends at GlobalWebIndex, this is likely to prompt a rush of new features from Twitter, as it looks to give existing users more reasons to keep on using it.
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