Twitter has updated its character limit as it stops counting usernames in replies

Giving its over 300 million users more room to reply to other people’s tweets, Twitter has announced that it will not count usernames towards a 140-character limit. “Now, when you reply to someone or a group, those @usernames won’t count toward your Tweet’s 140 characters,” Sasank Reddy, Product Manager at Twitter, said in a blog post late on Thursday. With this change, Twitter has simplified conversations. “Who you are replying to will appear above the Tweet text rather than within the Tweet text itself, so you have more characters to have conversations,” Reddy posted. You can tap on “Replying to” to easily see and control who’s part of your conversation. “When reading a conversation, you’ll actually see what people are saying, rather than seeing lots of @usernames at the start of a Tweet,” the post further read. Last year, media reports said that Twitter is building a new feature that will allow users to tweet longer - even in 10,000 characters - than its traditional 140-character limit. The 140-character limit has been around as long as Twitter has and has become part of the product’s personality.