Twitter increases character limit to 10,000 for Blue users, Elon Musk confirms

Ending months of speculation, Elon Musk-led Twitter has finally announced a higher character limit for tweets and it is 10,000 characters! What's the catch? The feature is only available to users who have signed up for Twitter's flagship programme - 'Twitter Blue'.

Twitter's affiliate account 'Twitter Write' tweeted in the early hours of the morning (local time), that is Twitter would not support tweets up to 10,000 characters in length. Additionally, there will also be the option of formatting your text in bold and italics. 

"We’re making improvements to the writing and reading experience on Twitter! Starting today, Twitter now supports Tweets up to 10,000 characters in length, with bold and italic text formatting. Sign up for Twitter Blue to access these new features, and apply to enable Subscriptions on your account to earn income directly on Twitter. Tap on “Monetization” in settings to apply today," the tweet said.

Another feature to entice users to sign up for Twitter Blue

The move comes after tech billionaire and Twitter CEO Elon Musk, last month had answered a query on the social media platform that he was working on "extending long-form tweets to 10k soon". A Twitter user posted a query saying, "The dev community and I were wondering if you could add code blocks to tweets?", to which Musk replied that the company will soon extend the long-form tweets' character limit.

Musk did not provide clarification at that time on whether the new feature would be restricted to Twitter Blue subscribers or if it would also be available to non-paying users.

The confirmation comes a month after Twitter's announcement of increasing the tweet character limit to 4,000 characters for Blue subscribers in the US. This marked the second instance in the company's 16-year history that it has modified its character count. The first time was in 2017 when Twitter doubled its 140-character limit to 280.

Despite Musk's repeated suggestions that subscription revenue is the only way for Twitter to maintain financial stability in the long run, Twitter Blue had only amassed around 180,000 subscribers as of mid-January, which equated to less than 0.2% of its monthly active users, according to a Forbes report.

Since assuming control of the microblogging site, the SpaceX CEO has implemented various changes, such as introducing an $8 paid subscription for Twitter Blue, which offers badges of gold and silver ticks, and reinstating banned or controversial accounts. He expressed confidence in Twitter's potential to attract over one billion monthly users within the next 12 to 18 months.