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Twitter To Keep 140-Character Limit

Amid rumors that Twitter would expand to 10,000 characters for tweets, CEO Jack Dorsey confirmed that the social media platform will maintain its 140-character limit. “It’s staying. It’s a good constraint for us and it allows for of-the-moment brevity,” Dorsey said on NBC’s Today Show.

In January, a report from tech news website <re/code> said that Twitter was building a new feature to allow longer tweets with a targeted launch date of the end of Q1. Citing sources inside the company, the article said that Twitter was considering a limit of 10,000 characters, the current limit for Direct Messages between Twitter users. Tweets were reportedly to appear as normal, but could be clicked on to expand or link to longer posts.

Responding to those initial reports, Dorsey responded in a lengthy post on Twitter (through a posted screen shot, a common practice to skirt around Twitter’s character limit) that the company was “not going to be shy about building more utility and power into Twitter for people,” citing text that could be searched and highlighted instead of posted as screen shots. But Dorsey also said that the 140-character restriction “inspires creativity and brevity. And a sense of speed. We will never lose that feeling.”

A co-founder of Twitter, Dorsey was forced out of the company in 2008 before returning as CEO last year. Dorsey and the company have explored ways to reinvigorate Twitter with new ideas amidst slowing growth and a slumping stock price.