Looks like Twitter wants its users to start using Twitter Direct Messages to privately chat with their friends as it will soon be increasing Direct Message character count.
Popular social networking site Twitter is rolling out yet another update by increasing Direct Message (DM) character count from 140 to a colossal 10,000 characters - enough to fit a short novel in a DM.
Clearly, DM is all set to move on up to the messaging big leagues and with this change, it just became a legitimate messaging application.
Starting in July, direct messages will no longer be limited to 140 characters. The huge change was announced on the company's developer website Thursday, June 11, by Sachin Agarwal, Twitter's product manager for direct messages, just about an hour before the company's CEO, Dick Costolo, stepped down.
Until now, DMs were nothing more than quick chatter, just like Twitter itself in several ways. Is the update any indication of upcoming changes for the length of public tweet? Agarwal wrote, "You may be wondering what this means for the public side of Twitter. Nothing! Tweets will continue to be the 140 characters they are today."
The social networking giant's move comes in the wake of Twitter coming under fire on numerous fronts, including an inconvenient UI and an impression that it has done very little abolish trolls, WSJ noted.
Earlier this week, Twitter rolled out a new feature that allows users to share their block lists with one another. Twitter users can create a list of users they do not wish to interact with. A blocked user cannot see tweets or view profile of the person who added him/her to the block list.
Twitter announced it is allowing users to share block lists in order to make the service safer for "people in your community facing similar issues," such as harassment or bullying. Twitter users who import another user's block list into their Twitter profile will block the list's multiple account all at once automatically.
That being said, some may argue that these changes undoes some of what makes Twitter, Twitter but this is basically a "stay here-why leave?!" play, something Twitter's rival Facebook knows very well. Clearly, Twitter doesn't want its users to go anywhere else to have a long conversation.
