Twitter's investors have long clamored for bold changes that would reenergize the company, attract new users and lift the stock out of its doldrums. Three months into his tenure as permanent CEO, Jack Dorsey appears to be listening to their pleas.
Twitter is said to be working on a feature that would allow users to create tweets with as many as 10,000 characters, obliterating the 140-character limit that's been synonymous with the microblogging service since its inception, according to a report in the tech blog Re/code.
Citing unnamed sources, Re/code said the company expects the feature, internally called "Beyond 140," to debut around March. However, an official launch date has not been set, and the final character limit could change in the meantime, the report said. Twitter is testing a design for the feature in which tweets appear as they do now, but with an option to click to expand a tweet to see more content, Re/code said. This "Read More" option would help preserve a design that many of the site's core users love. Twitter already introduced a 10,000 character limit for "Direct Messages," which allows users to chat privately, one-on-one or in a group. A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment.
The ability to view larger pieces of content on Twitter could help encourage users to stay on the service instead of jumping to other sites. This could increase the value of users to advertisers, and potentially boost users' engagement with the site's other features.
Although the impact an expanded character-count would have is unclear, bold experiments like this are what Twitter needs to dramatically grow its user base and boost its stock. Twitter's user growth has stalled in the last year, even as rivals like Instagram continue to expand their audiences at a brisk pace. Twitter currently has about 317 million monthly active users. The stock has fallen about 40% since this time last year.
But bold moves are risky, as they can alienate existing users. Not surprisingly, longtime users and pundits took to Twitter to debate the possible change, with many bemoaning the idea.
Twitter with >140-character public posts is something else, and maybe just fine. But it's absolutely not Twitter.
— Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor) January 5, 2016
In unending quest to ruin the product, Twitter execs press ahead w/ 10,000-character limit. https://t.co/P15vuu7C8B pic.twitter.com/wqJCIWeQjt — Jim Roberts (@nycjim) January 5, 2016
Beyond 140 is not the only attempt by Twitter's brass to shake things up. Late last year, Twitter launched a new tab of human-curated content called "Moments" highlighting trends and events with the aim of making it easier for users to get value from the service. Twitter is considering changing its reverse chronological timeline, another fixture. In November, the company changed its star-shaped "Favorite" button to a heart-shaped "Like" button, and has taken several steps to make the site more visual, expanding the size of images and adding GIF and video previews. And on Tuesday, Twitter announced another new featured, called "Conversational Ads," aimed at boosting engagement on the site between users and businesses. Advertisers can now include call-to-action buttons that prompt users to engage with their tweets and share their content.
When Dorsey, who is also founder and CEO of Square, was officially appointed to lead Twitter in October, he said he expected “dramatic” product changes to affect not only Twitter’s main app, but also Twitter’s video apps Periscope and Vine. He described the plans as “bold” and ones that will be largely aimed at helping people get immediate value from using the service and turning the site into a utility the general population uses daily. Dorsey affirmed those plans when the company reported its third quarter earnings.
"We have a number of things on the roadmap, which are iterations, which continue to make Twitter easier," Dorsey said on a conference call with investors. "And then we have some things that we think are pretty bold in terms of really speaking to patterns that we've seen throughout our history, having to do with communities and running people to those communities much faster."
