Twitter has announced it's making some changes. Don't know what it all means?
We've broken it down for you:
What's actually changing?
There are four changes:
- When replying to a tweet, usernames no longer count towards the character limit
- Photos, GIFs, videos, polls or quoted tweetsalso no longer count in towards the limit (linksstill do though)
- You can now retweet and quote yourself
- Twitter is scrapping the unofficial .@ convention. If you start a tweet with a username, it will be seen by all your followers
Twitter says the changes are all about letting you get more out of your 140 characters.
So you'll no longer reply to three people, add a photo and be stuck with 4 characters for your actual tweet.
Will my Twitter feed look any different?
Not really.
But it's likely that you'll see even more GIFs, videos and photos in your feed, because they'll no longer interfere with the 140 character limit.
Which just means you can put that newly installed GIF keyboard Twitter introduced to good use!
So will my replies now be visible to all my followers?
Nope.
If you start a new tweet with a @username, it'll display to all your followers.
If you want keep a reply semi-private, just hit the reply button as before.
The changes just affect new tweets, and are in response to the unofficial Twitter convention of starting a tweet with .@ to make sure all your followers saw it.
Why would I want to retweet myself?
Because of the way Twitter works, some of your followers won't see that hilarious Game of Thrones observation you made at 11:22pm when they check their timelines at 7:30 the next morning.
If you have a particular tweet you think went unnoticed and needs some extra love, you can now retweet it to give it a second life at a time of your choosing.
When's it all happening?
It's a little vague.
Officially Twitter says the changes will be introduced "over the coming months". It says the wraps have come off the changes today to allow developers time to adjust before they roll out to all users.
Why is Twitter making changes?
Twitter has struggled to keep pace with other social media titans like Facebook and Instagram when it comes to user base growth.
According to industry experts the changes are an attempt to get more people to use the service.