Twitter Removing 140-Character Limit from Direct Messages

Twitter has been overhauling Direct Messages over the past several months, and today it’s announcing an enormous change: plans to lift the classic 140-character limit. Starting in July, DMs will seemingly be able to run as long as you’d like, turning it into much more of a typical instant message and group chat service.

It’s a sensible move — the 140-character limit was always more of a nuisance in DMs, since they’re private and not meant to be the same type of quick info bite as a tweet. It’ll also be a huge help to companies that run customer service on Twitter. Twitter has already made it easier for companies to do that by giving them the option to let anyone initiate a DM, and now they’ll be able to send long messages back and forth, rather than being arbitrarily restricted.

Twitter traditionalists don’t have to worry much: “You may be wondering what this means for the public side of Twitter,” writes Sachin Agarwal, Twitter’s DM product manager. “Nothing! Tweets will continue to be the 140 characters they are today.”

There’s no specific date on the change beyond “July.” That should still give you enough time to prepare yourself.

In related news:

Dick Costolo is out at Twitter, a source tells me. Jack Dorsey is taking over as interim CEO.

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