Twitter Relaxes 140 Character Limit So Pictures, Videos and @names No Longer Count

After much discussion and rumours, Twitter has finally announced it is relaxing its 140 character limit for tweets on the social media platform.

Announcing the change, the company said it wants users to “be able to do even more” with their Tweets, so now photos, GIFs, polls and videos will no longer count towards the 140 character limit.

And when you are replying to a Tweet, @names will also not use up the 140 limit, meaning users no longer have to “penny-pinch” to ensure messages reach an entire group.

In addition to this, Twitter will now also let you retweet and quote yourself, adding the retweet button to your own tweets for the first time.

The last change is that when you post a tweet that begins with a username, this will now reach all your followers, rather than having to use the common .@ convention.

Twitter said these updates will be available over the coming months, as the company begins to roll it out to users around the world.

The company has made a number of changes to the platform this year, adding polls to Twitter, the ability to react with GIFs, as well as broadcasting on Perisope via Twitter & slightly tweaking its timeline algorithm.