The 140-character count was created to allow tweets to be send over SMS text messages. SMS has a 160-character count, so Twitter made its limit 20 characters shorter to allow for @names.

When Twitter was born in 2006, it was designed to be used via wireless carriers’ text-messaging services. They were (and are) limited to 160 characters.

Twitter is expanding its character limit on text posts from 140 to 280 characters with a small subset of users as part of a “test” — but the change is expected to roll out to all users soon.

Rosen said during the testing period, only 5% of tweets topped the 140-character limit, ... a somewhat arbitrary choice based on the 160 character limit on pre-smartphone SMS text messaging. ...

Twitter is finally, at long last, relaxing its 140 character limit with a move it should have made years ago. The company today announced that most things that aren’t plain old text or emojis ...

Historically, only 9% of tweets hit Twitter’s 140-character limit, now it’s 1%. That said, Twitter did see some impact from the doubling of character count in terms of how people write.

Earlier today, a report by Re/code’s Kurt Wagner indicated that Twitter is building a feature to let users share text updates longer than 140 characters: Twitter is building a new feature that will ...

What was the original reason for the 140-character limit? It came before the smartphone days “when Tweets needed to fit into an SMS text message” (The Week magazine January 22, 2016 p. 18).

A report from Recode that stated Twitter was considering raising its character limit from 140 characters to 10,000 sent the social network into a tizzy, and has seemingly forced Twitter CEO Jack ...

Why 140 Characters, When One Will Do? Tracing The Emoji Evolution The smiley face and heart icons popular in text messages predate today's smartphones. To trace their roots, you have to go back to ...

Politics, 140 characters of text at a time Share this: Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Click to share on X (Opens in new window) Subscribe; Login; Account Settings Contact Us Log Out.

The 140 character limit has "become a beautiful constraint," wrote Dorsey. ... it was added in Twitter's early days so that text could fit in a single SMS message. ...