As rumoured, Twitter has today announced the expanded tweets function which no longer counts selected multi-media such as gifs, pictures, videos, as well as Polls and quoted tweets towards your 140 character limit.
The expanded tweet function was announced back in May, so it’s been a long time coming, but it’s here now. In their tweet announcing the availability of the oft-requested feature Twitter shows how it works:
Say more about what's happening! Rolling out now: photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and Quote Tweets no longer count toward your 140 characters. pic.twitter.com/I9pUC0NdZC
— Twitter (@Twitter) September 19, 2016
One function announced back in May, but not mentioned here is the ability to broadcast an @ reply to all your followers. It doesn’t mean you automatically see everyones conversations, only ones that they choose to retweet. As Twitter put it when they announced it:
Goodbye, .@: These changes will help simplify the rules around Tweets that start with a username. New Tweets that begin with a username will reach all your followers. (That means you’ll no longer have to use the ”.@” convention, which people currently use to broadcast Tweets broadly.) If you want a reply to be seen by all your followers, you will be able to Retweet it to signal that you intend for it to be viewed more broadly.
The updated function is expected to be switched on from server side, but make sure your app is up to date just to be sure.
