Social media giant to remove photos, links from 140-character count

folarin okunola

May 17, 2016 8:58 AM

Jack Dorsey, CEO and Co-founder of Twitter, has been trying different things to simplify the platform and encourage growth - something it needs badly.

Twitter Co-founder and newly announced CEO Jack Dorsey

Twitter has announced that it plans to stop counting photos and links as part of its 140-character limit, according to Bloomberg report.

Quartz reports that a Twitter spokesman declined to comment but Bloomberg reports that the change could roll out in as soon as the next two weeks.

Jack Dorsey, CEO and Co-founder of Twitter, has been trying different things to simplify the platform and encourage growth - something it needs badly - in an effort to transform the social network into a more mainstream competitor.

In October, for example, it launched a "moments" tab to bring order back to the chaos of people Twitter timelines. Moments centered tweets around topics, making conversation around events, and are easier to follow.

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Back in January, when reports of Twitter exploring the option of increasing its 140-character limit to 10,000 characters, Dorsey tweeted a screenshot of an extended message, a solution many people on the platform already use to circumnavigate the character limit.

“As long as it’s consistent with what people want to do, we’re going to explore it,” Dorsey wrote.

Apparently, it seems Twitter has discovered that adding photos, links and videos to its messages tend to create more retweets - and engagement. Therefore, taking those elements out of the 140-character limit could lead people to include them more often in their tweets.

We await Twitter's next move.

folarin okunola