Tweet your heart out in Twitter Notes

Twitter says goodbye to the 280 character limit. (Image from Twitter)

When Twitter was launched more than 15 years ago, part of the platform’s draw was its limit of 140 characters, inspiring creativity and brevity in its users. Although character constraints seemed restrictive, some took advantage of this format and even had fun with it. 

When the character limit doubled to 280 in 2017, the increase drew mixed reactions. Most users poked fun at the change and a few grumpy tweeters vowed to never compose a tweet longer than 140 characters. Others were downright upset, claiming the expansion would ruin Twitter by making it more like Facebook. 

Facebook is shaking

Well, the Facebook-ification of Twitter has arrived. The bird app is testing a new long-form blogging feature named Twitter Notes, the social media platform confirmed in a tweet. The new feature would allow users to share essay-like write-ups as a link both on and off the social media platform.

The feature is currently available to a select group of users in the US, UK, Canada, and Ghana, and that people “in most countries” can read Notes on and off Twitter.

Twitter shared how the feature will work in two separate GIFs. Users can click into the “Write” tab to start writing a Note, and can then embed the Note into their tweet when finished. Several writers have already published Notes on the platform, which appear as long-form posts that can have tweets, videos, and images mixed in.

In May, app researcher Jane Manchun Wong shared screenshots of a feature named Twitter Notes in some places and Twitter Articles in others. The feature allowed users to write formatted blog posts complete with pictures, links, and embedded tweets. More screenshots of the same tool were shared in April by another app researcher which showed options for users to share posts with their followers, or create standalone links for posts to share elsewhere on the web.

"From the rise of the screenshot announcement Tweet to the newsletter boom, a new reality became clear: people were writing long elsewhere, and then coming to Twitter to share their work and for the conversation surrounding all those words," said Twitter's Rembert Browne in one of Twitter's first Notes. "With Notes, the goal is to fill in that missing piece and help writers find whatever type of success they desire."

Aiming to provide Twitter users with more flexibility and control, Notes' rich-text editor will enable writers to bold, italicize, and otherwise format their words. Titles are limited to 100 characters, but the body of a Note can reach up to 2,500 words before Twitter cuts you off—giving you more than enough space to write your heart out and then some. 

Significantly, users will also be able to edit their Notes after publication from the outset, which is a notable deviation from Twitter's anti-edit stance. A label signaling that the Note has been edited will be added to the top of the article, and Twitter has said it’s requiring users who are part of the current test to "include updates in their Notes informing readers about changes they have made to the Notes in a manner consistent with best practices for online editing of published content."

The company also said newsletter firm Revue, which it bought last year, would now be part of Twitter Write along with the "Notes" feature.

Is Twitter still Twitter?

Adding long-form writing to Twitter could drastically change the character of the platform, which has long been defined by short-form writing. On the other hand, Twitter is arguably already full of longer written screeds, shared in the form of threads of tweets or tweeted screenshots of others’ articles or users’ own writing. By incorporating long-form writing into its platform, could Twitter potentially capture more of the value of these posts?

The bird app’s founder Jack Dorsey once tweeted, “what makes Twitter, Twitter is its fast, public, live conversational nature. And by focusing on conversation and messaging, the majority of tweets will always be short and sweet and conversational.” 

With the onset of Notes, this changes what we know of Twitter and part of what makes the platform so innovative. Twitter is about brevity. Tweets get right to the point with the information or thoughts that matter. 

One thing is certain, Twitter change is coming and we’re not just talking about its Elon era. Are we ready to read other people’s essays or possibly even write our own?