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Twitter announced Wednesday that it has removed the limit of 140 characters on direct messages between users of the service. Tweets are still capped at 140 characters. When you DM people now, you can drone on for as many as 10,000 characters — an attempt by Twitter to be more like Facebook. From CNET:
As the competition intensifies from the likes of Facebook and other popular message apps including WhatsApp, Twitter is apparently trying to keep pace.
"Our users will now have the flexibility to write longer and express themselves in a more natural and comfortable way," said Sachin Agarwal, Twitter's product manager for direct messages.The upgrade, which was originally announced in June, could help the struggling social network reach a wider, mainstream audience to appease Wall Street investors. Despite Twitter having about 316 million monthly active users, it pales compares to the 1.5 billion who use Facebook, which puts it at major disadvantage as it attempts to attract advertisers and more money.
The direct message expansion takes shape as Twitter is trying to make the site more engaging and easier to use, something that its top execs openly admitted late last month it has struggled to do.
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