Twitter Trials Expand Tweets From 140 Characters To 280

(RTTNews) - Twitter Inc. (TWTR) will lift its 140-character limit on tweets in an experiment with a small group that may expand to the entire social media platform.

The test announced Tuesday will let users send tweets with as many as 280 characters. Lengthening the character limit may result in more engaging conversation on the platform, helping its bid to turn itself into a destination for live events and discussion. It includes all languages except Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Twitter said those Asian languages can convey about double the amount of information in one character compared with many other languages.

"We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter," Aliza Rosen, company product manager, and Ikuhiro Ihara, senior software engineer, said Tuesday in a blog post. "When people don't have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some time to spare, we see more people tweeting."

Character limit is a source of frustration for people tweeting in English, but not, for example, in Japanese, Twitter said. The company said its research shows that 9 percent of all tweets in English hit 140 characters, while only 0.4 percent in Japanese reach the maximum.