New York: In a piece of good news for Twitteratti, Twitter has decided to increase the word limit for direct messages (DMs) to 10,000 characters from the present 140.
Twitter's product designer Sachin Agarwal informed developers of the news ahead of the change, which will be rolled out to users in July, Venturebeat.com reported. No official date has been decided for the change though. The move does not remove Twitter's design choice of constraining tweets to 140 characters - only direct messages.
"It's a beautiful constraint that has inspired a whole new form of writing," Twitter investor Chris Sacca wrote in a blog post earlier this month about what Twitter can do to improve.
Sacca did not say he had a problem with the 140-character cap on DMs - and that is what's changing.
Direct messages in other social networks, like Facebook and LinkedIn, do not have length limits.
But Twitter's affinity for the 140-character limit goes back to Twitter's earliest days, when Twitter sent tweets in text messages.
Now those days are long gone, and Twitter can evolve to meet the needs of its users and investors.
However, before you start fretting at the prospects of receiving unsolicited extra long messages there is some more news for you. You can stop people you do not follow from sending you these new, extra-long DMs.
You can do that by unchecking the "Receive Direct Messages from anyone" box in the Security and privacy sections in Twitter's settings.
