(RNN) - Twitter is set to test an increase in the 140-character allotment by which users are normally restricted.
The change will double the possible length of any given tweet to 280 characters in an effort to "help users be more expressive," according to The Verge.
"Our research shows us that the character limit is a major cause of frustration for people tweeting in English,” Twitter said in a blog post. “When people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people Tweeting — which is awesome!”
Tweets totaling 140 characters make up for 4 percent of all English communication on Twitter, excluding Direct Messages. This suggests that users likely feel that they must edit their commentary or thoughts down in order to get their message across.
Twitter cites "languages impacted by cramming" as one of the main reasons for the change. These are any languages apart from Chinese, Japanese and Korean. These Asian languages have different writing systems and shorter tweets on average - they will not be included in the extended character allotment.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey explained the change further in a Tweet:
This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence! https://t.co/TuHj51MsTu
— jack (@jack) September 26, 2017
Twitter has made the 280-character feature available to a small group of users, but hasn't said when exactly the rest of us will have access to it.
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