Twitter ends 140-character limit for sending direct messages

New York, Aug 13  Starting Wednesday, the micro-blogging site Twitter lifted the 140-character limit for its 300 million-plus users to send direct messages, an Indian-origin Twitter official has announced.

In a post on the official Twitter blog, Twitter product manager Sachin Agarwal wrote: "If you’ve checked your Direct Messages today, you may have noticed that something’s missing: the limitation of 140 characters. You can now chat on (and on) in a single Direct Message, and likely still have some characters left over."

While Twitter is largely a public experience, Direct Messages let you have private conversations about the memes, news, movements, and events that unfold on Twitter.

“Each of the hundreds of millions of Tweets sent across Twitter every day is an opportunity for you to spark a conversation about what’s happening in your world,” he posted.

“That is why we have made a number of changes to Direct Messages over the last few months. Today’s change is another big step towards making the private side of Twitter even more powerful and fun,” Agarwal noted.

You may be wondering what this means for the public side of Twitter.

“In a word, nothing. Tweets will continue to be the 140 characters they are today, rich with commentary as well as photos, videos, links, Vines, gifs, and emoji. So, start working on those sonnets,” he added.

The change is available for Android and iOS apps, twitter.com, TweetDeck and Twitter for Mac.

It will continue to roll out worldwide over the next few weeks.

“If you can’t wait to try out longer Direct Messages, be sure you’re using the latest versions of our apps so you get the update right away. Sending and receiving Direct Messages via SMS will still be limited,” he posted.

Last year, Twitter rolled out a plan to focus on Direct Messages to help complement the public aspect of its platform.

In June this year, the company notified third-party developers about the 140-character elimination.