Twitter Changes Rules For Tweets To Allow More Expressivity

Shares of Twitter Inc TWTR fell 2.6 percent on Tuesday trading after the company announced it will make its 140-characters policy more lax. In the next few months, user names/mentions and media attachments (pictures, videos, polls, gifs) will no longer count toward fulfilling the character limit.

Other changes were also introduced in the social media platform. For instance, users will now be able to retweet and quote themselves, and new tweets (not replies) starting with a username will be available for everyone to see--and not only the person cited. This will put an end to starting a tweet with a period.

While some rules have changed, others haven’t. For example, links will continue to be included in the character-count, and tweets will still not be editable, once posted.

"We're always going to look for opportunities to make Tweets a lot more expressive, and enable people to say what they want to say,” CEO Jack Dorsey explained. Simplifying the product could help attract new users and solve the company’s stagnating user growth, he added.

Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no positions in any of the securities mentioned above.