Twitter Tweaks Character Limits

Bloomberg reports:

Twitter Inc. will soon stop counting photos and links in their 140-character limit for tweets, according to a person familiar with the matter. The change could happen in the next two weeks, said the person who asked not to be named because the decision isn’t yet public. Links currently take up 23 characters, even after Twitter automatically shortens them. The company declined to comment.

It’s one step in a larger plan to give users more flexibility on the site. Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said in January that the company was looking for new ways to display text on Twitter, and would experiment based on how the people use the service. For example, some people tweet screenshots of longer text in articles, or send many tweets one after the other to tell a story.

The character limit was originally created to suit the text message formats of pre-smart cell phones.