Twitter is about to do that thing it should have done a long time ago. No, not roll out an optional, full-blown algorithmic timeline. It’s going to stop counting photos and links against tweets’ character lengths, according to a Bloomberg report published on Monday.
Twitter might enact the change within the next two weeks, per Bloomberg. A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment on the report.
Links appear to be an even bigger factor in overtaking tweet character counts than photos (and maybe an even bigger frustration for people who already don’t like editing themselves within Twitter’s 140-character confines).
Not only do links automatically take up 23 characters when included in a tweet, but they appear to be included in tweets more often than photos, based on Marketing Land’s analysis last month of 300 of the most-followed brands, celebrities and media companies on Twitter. That analysis showed that a majority of the tweets that were 60 characters or longer contained links, including 68 percent of the tweets that were between 130 and 140 characters long.
So why would Twitter do this? Because maybe people will be more likely to post links or photos to Twitter if it’s easier to do so, and if that happens, then maybe more people will check out Twitter more regularly. Again, maybe. But it’s worth a shot. On Facebook, people can post links and photos without worrying that they’ll need to be even more concise with what they say about the photo or link, and more than a billion people use Facebook every day. By comparison, Twitter only attracts 310 million users each month and would like to attract more to achieve its goal of building “the planet’s best daily connected audience.”
Will reducing some of the friction in posting links and photos alone get Twitter to that goal? Nope. But it won’t hurt and will make posting to Twitter less of a pain.
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