Double-sized tweets all about attracting new users, VCU social media expert says

By Brian McNeill

Twitter has announced that it is testing out a longer character limit for tweets, raising the maximum tweet length from 140 characters to 280.

What is behind this move? And what might these double-sized tweets mean for the social media platform and its 328 million active users?

Virginia Commonwealth University social media expert Marcus Messner, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture in the College of Humanities and Sciences, says it’s about appealing to a wider audience.

“The test expansion of the tweet length is an attempt by Twitter to attract new users,” Messner said. “The social media platform has faced challenges to grow its active user base in recent years. This move is just the latest to allow users to provide more content in their tweets, which are already excluding reply handles and attachments like photos and videos.”

“Based on their first reactions, it has to be seen whether current users will value this change or whether it will change the fundamental characteristics of Twitter, which have been defined by brevity and speed since the start,” he said.

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