In a blog post by the social media company, which now boasts of over 380 million users, it was stated that it is testing tweets that are as long as 280 characters in a bid to make it easy for every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter. This new catch will be first available for a selection of languages of those impacted by cramming except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. Although Twitter is confident about their data and the positive impact this change will have, they want to try it out with a small group of people before they make a decision to launch to everyone. Twitter said that longer tweets were much more popular among those writing in English, as opposed to Japanese, citing data that only 0.4 percent of tweets written in Japanese were 140 characters, as compared with 9 percent written in English. Company research shows that the character limit is a major cause of frustration for people Tweeting in English, but it is not for those Tweeting in Japanese. As a result, loosening the rules around the characters for the English-speaking users who tend to use more characters in tweets will imply that they also hit character limits less frequently. That may lead English-speaking users to post more regularly, as well. The 140-character limit, that is now facing the axe, originated from the use of SMS text messages. Twitter’s founders, including Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, wanted a limit just below the SMS cap of 160 characters.
