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Twitter

Twitter to lift 140-character DM limit in bid to compete with messaging apps

By Digital Trends
Published | Updated
TWITTER-RESULTS

The Twitter logo is shown at its corporate headquarters in San Francisco, Calif. April 28, 2015. (REUTERS/Robert Galbraith)

Twitter is about to do away with its 140-character limit for Direct Messages. The change will come into effect next month, the social media company said in a message on its developer blog on Thursday.

Just to be clear, the 140-character limit for public tweets remains in place, with no sign of that altering.

This latest change is one of several made to the private messaging element of the app in recent months, and looks set to help Twitter compete more effectively with the myriad of popular messaging apps already on the market.

Earlier this year, the San Francisco-based company announced support for group messaging up to 20 users, while more recently it allowed users to opt in to receiving DMs from any other Twitter user. Before that, DMs could only be sent between two people who already followed each other.

Related: Become Twitter famous in seven simple steps

Twitter's decision to ditch the limit for DMs makes sense, though some may wonder why it wasn't done earlier.

Customer service agents, for example, will find the change useful, as they'll now be able to engage more freely and naturally when contacting a user about a particular issue, and no longer have to knock out a detailed response across several messages.

"We've done a lot to improve Direct Messages over the past year and have much more exciting work on the horizon," Twitter's Sachin Agarwal said in the message to developers.

Related: How to make a Twitter header

News of the change to DMs was understandably overshadowed by much bigger happenings at Twitter on Thursday. If you haven't already heard, CEO Dick Costolo has announced he'll be leaving the top job on July 1. The decision comes amid investor frustration at the company's apparent inability to grow its user base at a more rapid rate, among other ongoing issues.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey will step in as interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent successor. More details on the story can be found here.