Twitter's 4,000-character tweets are coming, says Elon Musk

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Twitter CEO and owner Elon Musk has confirmed that the current 280-character limit will soon be replaced by a new one — and it's going to change the way Twitter functions entirely.

According to Musk, Twitter will allow people to tweet messages that are as long as 4,000 characters, a huge increase. But so far it isn't clear when the change will be made or if it will be limited to people who pay for Twitter's premium option, Twitter Blue.

The news hasn't been confirmed by Twitter itself but rather, as is so often the case right now, via Musk's personal Twitter account. It came via a reply to a user that simply asked "is it true that Twitter is set to increase the characters from 280 to 4,000?" The response?

"Yes."

That response hasn't been universally well received, however. As some have already pointed out in the replies to the tweet, 4,000 characters is very long. One commenter said that 4,000-character-long tweets are "an essay, not a tweet."

It's clear that allowing such long tweets could change the way that people use Twitter, perhaps making it more similar to other social networks like Meta's Facebook. No longer will brevity be required, with long rambling posts allowed for the first time since Twitter's launch.

The 280-character limit is already twice that of the Twitter that launched, of course. That doubling of the limit back in 2017 was also poorly received by many at the time before being accepted, perhaps pointing to a similar situation with this impending change.

The original 140-character limit was based on the way Twitter worked — initially via SMS rather than an app — but that limitation hasn't been in place for years.

All eyes will be on Twitter and Musk to see how the new limit will be implemented and who will have access to it.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.