Twitter's 140-character limit to stay: CEO Jack Dorsey

New York, Mar 19: If you thought you will be able to convey more to your friends and policymakers on Twitter soon, hold on. According to the micro-blogging site, there is still time for you to tweet in 10,000 characters and its original 140-character limit is here to stay.

Appearing on a TV show, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that the 140-character limit is "a beautiful constraint" and that Twitter "will never lose that feeling".

"It's (140-characters) staying. It's a good constraint for us, and it allows for of-the-moment brevity... We're changing a lot. We're always going to make Twitter better," he was quoted as saying in a Tech Crunch report on Saturday.

Earlier in January, media reports said that Twitter is building a new feature that will allow users to tweet longer than its traditional 140-character limit.

The company is currently considering a 10,000-character limit, recode.net reported, adding that Twitter may launch this feature toward the end of the first quarter.

This is the character limit the company uses for its Direct Messages product.

According to the report, it is also possible that the 10,000-character feature may change before it is finally rolled out.

"Twitter is currently testing a version of the product in which tweets appear the same way they do now, displaying just 140 characters, with some kind of call to action that there is more content you can't see," recode.net said, quoting sources.

Clicking on the tweets will then expand them to reveal more content.

The 140-character limit has been around as long as Twitter has and has become part of the product's personality.

Twitter is also working on the idea of changing its reverse chronological timeline.

The micro-blogging site is experimenting with a Facebook-type way of sorting your timeline where tweets are sorted by relevance and not in reverse chronological order as it happens now.

According to motherboard.vice.com, Twitter is working with algorithms similar to the ones Facebook uses to order items on your news feed.

"This is an experiment. We're continuing to explore ways to surface the best content for people using Twitter," a company spokeswoman was quoted as saying.

Twitter has been hinting towards an algorithmic-driven news feed for more than a year.

The test is part of Dorsey's promise for bold changes to Twitter to help get it out of its slow growth.

IANS