4,000-Character Tweets Are Here, But Not Everyone Can Send Them
Since Elon Musk took control of Twitter in October 2022, the site has undergone some big changes. Notably, many advertisers left the platform out of protest and the advertising structure itself was entirely overhauled. In the olden days of Twitter, notable accounts were verified with a blue check mark. Elon was famously not a fan of Twitter's prior verification system and launched (and relaunched) Twitter Blue, which anyone can pay for monthly to get a blue check mark.
According to Twitter, Blue subscribers are privileged to many features regular users don't have access to, including the ability to undo and edit tweets. Subscribers can also upload longer videos and enjoy a host of other features. Throughout all the changes, one thing stayed constant: the length of tweets. Until now, the maximum number of characters you could put in a tweet was 280 characters, and not a single bit more. Now, according to Twitter Blue's account, that character limit has been increased to 4,000.
Article-length tweets are here
According to a 1,280-character tweet from the Twitter Blue account, the longer tweet feature is now live but only for Twitter Blue subscribers in the United States, and not for the whole site. Non-subscribers can read the tweets and reply but are unable to post longer tweets themselves. It's also worth noting that web users can't save drafts of longer tweets, for now.
Fortunately for anyone scrolling through their timeline, the tweet preview will be limited to 280 characters and will only expand upon clicking "Show More." That's a relief for users tired of scrolling for ages to see the point of a tweet thread. It's yet to be seen how this feature will be implemented in the future by Blue subscribers, but now the average tweet might be quite a bit longer.
To put 4,000 characters into perspective, that's well over 700 words, depending on the content of the tweet. The longer tweet feature is one of the first major features Twitter Blue subscribers have access to that other users are capable of seeing (or scrolling past entirely).