Twitter Heard You: The 140-Character Limit Is Here to Stay

There’s good news for the Twitter faithful Friday: the network’s signature 140-character limit isn’t going anywhere.

Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey told the Today Show’s Matt Lauer that the limit is too much a part of Twitter’s identity to let go. “It’s staying, it’s a good constraint for us,” he said. “It allows for of-the-moment brevity.”

Twitter’s chief executive was on the Today Show Friday to celebrate Twitter’s 10th anniversary this month. Dorsey sent the network’s first tweet on March 21, 2006 saying, “Just setting up my twttr.”

There had been rumors that Twitter would expand its character limit in a bid to also expand its audience. But many have also pointed out that doing so might undermine the quick, free-flowing, real-time culture of the social network. Dorsey, at least from his comments, appears to agree with that.

In the interview, Dorsey also strongly reiterated the company’s assertion that it does not censor its users or hide inflammatory content – as long as it adheres to the company’s community standards.

“Twitter’s always been about controls, people can follow whoever they want. And it’s our job to make sure they see the most important things and the things that matter to them,” Dorsey said. “There are tweets that promote violence, which is against our terms of service, so people have controls to block and people have controls to mute.”

Twitter and Dorsey have been working hard to get more people to sign on to the network. Taking steps to curb harassment on the site while maintaining a devotion to free speech has been a particularly tricky part of the company’s efforts.

The company’s also just trying to make Twitter easier to use. In an effort to make more sense of the constant streams of information on the social network, the company has added new features such as the digest-like “Moments” and a recent option to have algorithms choose the order of tweets in users’ timelines.

So far, these changes haven’t produced their desired effect, according to a Thursday report from eMarketer. The research firm lowered its growth projections for Twitter’s worldwide ad revenue to $2.61 billion from $2.95 billion.

© 2016 The Washington Post