In case you haven’t heard, stuff is happening www.Twitter.com. “What’s the what,” you ask? No one is completely sure, but apparently you can now write a full 140 character thought (tweet) without being penalized by having a long Twitter “handle.”
You may be asking, “What is this dude talking about???” Here’s the rub; Yesterday, if my “handle” was “@FJSC” as opposed to “@FranklinJones,” I had nine more characters to use in the actual message of my Tweet. (If my math is incorrect, please be kind).
No more. Now the length of your Twitter handle won’t count against you.
I know, I know…Your life, like mine, just had one of those exhale moments.
Just teasing a little, but in the early days of Twitter I can remember having to wordsmith some thoughts to get under the 140 character max. Further, while I did write this some weeks ago, Twitter has a big place in today’s social world and is a mega medium to pump out news (hyper-local to world), rumor, and gossip… super fast.
Here’s how the folks at www.TechCrunch.com explain it. Below is an excerpt from the full article:
FJ
Twitter’s New, ‘Simpler’ Rules For Character Counts In Tweets Go Live
Posted by Sarah Perez (@sarahintampa)
…In case you need a cheat sheet, here’s a summary of Twitter’s newer, “simpler” rules, including all those announced alongside the character count changes back in May. (See below)
(Note that the RT and QT changes were shipped a few months ago, while the @mentions and “.@” changes are still forthcoming.)
-You can only use 140 characters when composing a tweet. (Simplicity at its finest!)
-Oh, except when you’re posting non-text content like videos, GIFs, pictures and polls — those don’t count toward your 140 characters.
-But links still do.
-Quote tweets don’t though. Because even though they’re text, they’re like, old. Old stuff doesn’t count, only new stuff does….I think.
-ANYWAY, @mentions in replies won’t show anymore in the tweet — they’re like, in the header in the user interface or something.
-Yep, so these @mentions won’t count toward the 140 and you can mention up to 50 people.
-But if you want everyone to see your @reply, Twitter wants you to retweet yourself.
-Right — you can do that, Twitter says! — retweet yourself.
-And quote yourself.
-If you don’t do that, not everyone will see your @reply.
-Well, I mean if you write a new tweet that starts with an @username that’s like, not technically a reply. So it will been seen by everyone.
-So actually, Twitter is not really changing the rules for who can see your replies — because new tweets that begin with @username mentions aren’t really replies. The only people who will see your @ reply in their timeline are those who follow you and the person you’re replying to. Like before!
-Which means, I guess, if you want everyone to see your tweet even when they don’t follow both parties you could still use the period before the @username to make that happen….? Hold on, I’m getting confused…
-But now you can retweet yourself…so I guess Twitter would prefer you did that instead of using the dot @username thing? So this whole change is more of a suggestion, I guess?
-Oh, and use the native retweet if you retweet yourself…no one writes “RT” anymore.
-Or “MT.” No one does that. That was dumb.
-But when @usernames are mentioned in tweets, they still count toward your 140 characters like regular words do. (Just not when you’re replying to those @usernames and the @usernames are auto-populated).
SEE? EASY!!
I mean, really, isn’t this so much better than – oh, I don’t know – just displaying the first 140 characters, then hiding the rest behind a click?
And isn’t this feature set just hugely in demand, even more so than an “edit your tweet” button or some sort of legitimate product built in response to the widespread cyberbullying and trolling that takes place on Twitter…you know, something like what Instagram just launched?
I mean, I don’t hear anyone asking for these things…
Anyway…new ways to reduce character count.
Yay.
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