The proposed 71-times increase in the limit, allowing tweets of roughly 2,000 words in length, would be the latest departure from the origins of Twitter since the social network's co-founder Jack¹ Dorsey returned as chief executive last year.

 

While Twitter is beloved by dedicated² users in the media and public eye, it has failed to grow significantly in the last year while its major rivals Facebook and Instagram have stretched ahead.

 

According to technology website Re/Code, Twitter plans to introduce the change towards the end of the first quarter of the year. Twitter has not confirmed this.

 

The company has previously³ been reported to be raising the tweet limit above 140-characters, which was chosen when the service launched in 2006 to allow tweets and usernames to be received in a single text message, which had a 160-character limit.

 

Users now experience Twitter via smartphone apps, rather than text messages, but the limit has been a defining hallmark of the service, allowing multiple tweets to be read within a timeline. Extending the character limit is unlikely to mean enormous tweets appearing in feeds, however, with messages likely to be condensed to 140 characters and a "read more" option.

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