Social media giant Twitter announced Monday that it was rolling out changes to its tweet format that affect what counts toward the 140-character limit currently in place for tweets.
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The changes, which were originally announced in May, include the following:
When you’re replying to others in a Tweet, the @ names of the users you are replying to will no longer be counted in the 140-character limit.
Media attachments such as photos, GIFs, polls and quote tweets will no longer count as characters within a tweet. Note: If you include a link to a tweet in your tweet, the link itself will count toward the 140-character limit.
Users may now retweet and quote their own tweets.
Users will no longer have to use the .@ convention in order for their entire timeline to see a tweet that begins with a username. Instead, you may RT the tweet so that your timeline can see it.
Not included in today’s changes? A simpler way to create threads without having to reply to yourself and remove your own @ name over and over again.
Now, if only Twitter would come up with a way to address the widespread harassment that happens on its platform, we might actually be getting somewhere.
For more of black Twitter, check out The Chatterati on The Root and follow The Chatterati on Twitter.
Monique Judge is a freelance journalist in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter.
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