Reports circulated earlier this year that
"It's staying," Dorsey told NBC's Today Show in an interview on Friday. "It's a good constraint for us, and it allows for of-the-moment brevity."
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. In January, there were reports that Twitter was considering expanding tweets to accommodate as many as 10,000 characters. At the time, many users took to Twitter to express concern and even outrage, arguing that removing the trademark 140-character limit would ruin the personality and design of the site. Dorsey responded swiftly. In an expanded tweet, he said Twitter isn’t “going to be shy” about building new features, as long as they are consistent with how people want to use the service. He cited users’ desire to share longer pieces of text.
“We’ve spent a lot of time observing what people are doing on Twitter, and we see them taking screenshots of text and tweeting it,” Dorsey said in the tweet. “Instead, what if that text… was actually text? Text that could be searched. Text that could be highlighted. That’s more utility and power.”
Even though Dorsey says the 140-character limit isn't going away, it's still possible that Twitter could introduce some kind of tweet-expanding feature down the line. Last summer, Twitter removed the 140-character limit in its "Direct Message" tool, which supports private and group messaging.
Since taking the helm in July, Dorsey has emphasized his commitment to making bold product changes to make the site easier to use and more immediately valuable to the general population, not just to core users. Revamping the product is of serious importance to Twitter, which has been struggling to turn around slowing user growth. The number of monthly active users, excluding SMS “fast-followers” who access the site from a feature phone, dropped from 307 million in the third quarter to 305 million in the company's recently reported fourth quarter. Next Monday will mark the 10th birthday of tweets on the site.
"It [Twitter] is the easiest way to see what's happening in the world right now, live," Dorsey said on Friday. “We’ll be here on the 20th [anniversary], we’ll be here on the 30th. It’s a fundamental service... We have a lot of purpose.”
How much the general public will embrace that purpose remains to be seen.
