Twitter is currently testing 280 characters tweet as against the 140 characters most people are already used to. That is basically double of what it’s been.
This has since created a lot of buzz as most people seem not to be comfortable with the decision. Oh well, as earlier mentioned, it’s currently in beta and is currently being tested by selected users.
Thankfully, there are working tricks through which you can get that beta flavor to yourself. With the 280 characters limit, you should pretty much be able to convey your relatively lengthy tweets in a single tweet rather than having to break them.
Although currently being tested by selected few (i said that before), you can get the 280 characters tweet on your twitter account right now.
So far, I’ve found two tricks to getting this done and I’d love to share with you below.
For clarification purpose, below is the number of characters I could tweet on twitter before implementing the trick:
Below is the number of characters I could tweet after implementing the trick. Pay attention to the change in characters count:
I also published a tweet to show I am actually able to tweet about 280 characters.
So, i just successfully increased the twitter character tweet from 140 to 280 characters. And to prove this, i have decided to put out this test tweet.
Feel free to count the number of characters here. Trick should be up on the Blog in a bit. P.S: Time check: 1:58pm. 🙂
— Samuel Adeniyi (@Meet_Sammy) September 28, 2017
Feel free to count the characters.
Tricks To Activate Twitter 280 Characters Tweet
Trick #1. Using Google Chrome Browser and TweetDeck
First things first, you need to use Google Chrome on PC alongside tweetdeck.
- Using Google Chrome browser, visit tweetdeck.twitter.com
- When the page loads up, right click on any part of the page and select Inspect.
- Alternatively, click on the options menu on Google Chrome browser, hover over More tools and click Developer tools.
- Click on sources.
- With index being highlighted, click on the double arrow icon.
- Click on Snippets (as seen in the image above) and click on New Snippets if you currently have none.
- Copy this codes below and paste in the empty code box.
/*
This snippet is esssentially the same as being in the Twitter longer tweets test, for tweetdeck.
The character counter for tweets is accurate at the expense of breaking retweet and DMs.
*/
TD.services.TwitterClient.prototype.makeTwitterCall=function(b,e,f,g,c,d,h){c=c||function(){};d=d||function(){};b=this.request(b,{method:f,params:Object.assign(e,{weighted_character_count:!0}),processor:g,feedType:h});return b.addCallbacks(function(a){c(a.data)},function(a){d(a.req,"",a.msg,a.req.errors)}),b};
twttrTxt=Object.assign({},twttr.txt,{isInvalidTweet:function(){return!1},getTweetLength:function(){return twttr.txt.getTweetLength.apply(this,arguments)-140}});
When done, click on the play button (as indicated below) to run the snippet.
Now, click on the compose button and the 280 characters count should be displayed.
Trick 2#. Using Bookmark Method
Using Google Chrome or Firefox browser, visit this page and add the required item on the page to your browser bookmarks.
Go to tweetdeck.twitter.com, click on the bookmark you added in the above step and then tweet.
Viola! You should be able to find the tweet characters limit as 280 as against 140.
Feel free to use any of the steps above. In my case, the trick #1 worked for me.
Please Note: This trick is only valid using the tweetdeck interface. Reverting back to the usual twitter.com will have you back at 140 characters.
While this can be considered as an interesting development, most people seem not to be happy with it. However, i am pretty much sure that with time, it’d sink in.
For the records, when the new feature will become available globally at this point, cannot be ascertain. On a side note, it’d be really nice to have twitter introduce the EDIT feature. Or, what do you think?
