A 280-character take on Twitter increasing its tweet limit

Twitter is testing allowing tweets to be expanded to 280 characters – double the existing limit – in the latest effort to boost flagging growth at the social network.

Twitter is testing allowing tweets to be expanded to 280 characters – double the existing limit – in the latest effort to boost flagging growth at the social network. (AFP Photo)

For more than a decade, Twitter's brevity - 140 characters to be precise - has been its trademark. But its latest move to test increasing a tweet's character limit to 280 seems uncharacteristic.

In a blog post on Tuesday, Twitter said its emphasis on brevity would never change but wondered whether people could express themselves easily enough.

"Trying to cram your thoughts into a Tweet - we've all been there, and it's a pain," Twitter project manager Aliza Rosen and senior software engineer Ikuhiro Ihara said in the post.

Employees acknowledged some users may have an "emotional attachment" to the current limit.

We look at why the increased limit could go either way for Twitter. In 280 characters of course.