Twitter just released a new blog spin-off site- oh, wait, no it didn’t, but it is allowing for way longer Tweets now. If you’re a Twitter Blue subscriber, in the US of course, then you now have the privilege of creating Tweets that are up to 4000 characters long. Yep, you read that right – Four. Thousand. Characters. Is Twitter trying to match Facebook’s text post character limit now?
About Length
Does anyone even need or want this? Well, we could argue that higher character counts would mean that more people could express their ‘freedom of speech’, which was part of Elon Musk’s original takeover plans. Longer Tweets will be displayed in the main feed at standard length, with a ‘Show More…’ indicator pointing users to the remainder of the content.
It’s incredibly funny that Twitter chose to show a sample of this using only the phrase ‘more words’ repeated until they probably hit the character limit. But yes, at least you know now that the feature exists, and that all 300,000 Twitter Blue subscribers can now post their full biographies if they want. Either that, or they can now publish even longer, angst-filled rants.
“[Twitter Blue users] can also compose longer Tweets in a Quote Tweet or reply. Standard functionality like posting media, creating polls and using hashtags still apply. Everyone will be able to read longer Tweets, but only Blue subscribers can create them.”
It’s not really clear if anyone requested it, but Chief Twit Musk believes that by enabling users to post long-form text, that’ll eventually open up new avenues for monetization, and will see more top voices posting more stuff to the app. The recent Twitter Files are perhaps the best example here, with Musk’s hand-picked team of journalists trawling through the app’s archives to uncover accusations of corruption and government meddling, only to post their findings in insanely long Tweet threads.
It could make sense to post them on a more long-form focused format, but Musk obviously wants more, if not all attention on Twitter. Having longer Tweets could be valuable, but for the most part, given the app’s degrading reputation, it might be more damaging. After all, blogs exist.
The Wrap
It just seems like such a short-sighted addition. Is it something? Yes. Is it something that would justify the cost of a Blue subscription? A resounding NO. With Blue only making up of raction of Twitter’s total user base, its most popular creators might not even be able to use the option, which honestly sounds very counterintuitive. But maybe Musk will add a new monetization element in the future. Hey, as with all current Twitter pushes, it might end up being amazing or a fluke. If anything, it does make it easier to post Tweets worthy of their own Reddit thread, not that there are short ones that do already.
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