Twitter eliminates 140-character limit for Direct Messages

The change, wherein users can now exchange messages of up to 10,000 characters, is a step towards making the private side of Twitter more 'powerful and fun'.

Twitter has eliminated the 140-character limit for Direct Messages (DMs), and users can now exchange messages of up to 10,000 characters. The idea behind the move is to make direct messaging seem limitless. With this, Twitter aims to improve users' messaging experience, while helping them to express themselves more freely.

Private messaging is a core part of the Twitter experience and, earlier in 2015, Twitter launched Group Direct Messages, where multiple users could chat at once and any user could message another user privately, irrespective of whether they follow each other. The aim of these changes is to help users connect more easily and directly on the platform.

The update will roll out to 100 per cent of users worldwide, who use Twitter.com, TweetDeck and Twitter-owned-and-operated applications. At launch, Twitter will support reading and writing long DMs for iPhone, iPad, Android, Web, Twitter for Mac and TweetDeck.

Mobile web users will be able to receive long DMs, but not send them. SMS DMs are still limited. If a user sends an SMS DM longer than 140 characters, Twitter will split it into multiple messages. While the first message will be sent as a DM, in such a case, the remaining characters will get posted as tweets.