Twitter’s added one other ingredient to its Twitter Blue subscription bundle, with Blue members now in a position to write tweets up to 10,000 characters long, whereas they will additionally make the most of textual content formatting choices, like daring and italics, offering extra artistic alternatives.
We’re bettering the writing and studying expertise on Twitter! Beginning as we speak, Twitter now helps Tweets as much as 10,000 characters in size, with daring and italic textual content formatting.
Join Twitter Blue to entry these new options, and apply to allow…
— Twitter Write (@TwitterWrite) April 14, 2023
Which is cool, I assume. I imply, I’m unsure that anybody truly needs to learn a 10k character tweet, however good to have the choice. I assume.
Twitter Blue subscribers might already put up tweets up to 4k characters in length, offering expanded alternative to share extra in-depth posts. However even these are somewhat annoying, with the tweets lower off after the primary 280 characters in-stream. You then should faucet by way of to learn the remainder, which feels considerably counter-intuitive for Twitter and its conventional UI.
However perhaps it simply takes some getting used to – in any occasion, Twitter chief Elon Musk appears satisfied {that a} key barrier to folks posting longer content material within the app is the present size restrictions, and that by eradicating them, and increasing what’s attainable, that can see extra customers sharing extra of their unique content material to the platform direct, versus linking folks off to their WordPress web site, or YouTube within the case of video uploads.
Which is one other ingredient of Twitter Blue, with subscribers additionally able to post videos up to 60 minutes long, however it stays to be seen whether or not customers actually need to lean again and watch an hour lengthy clip within the tweet feed.
Does it actually matter to creators whether or not they have so as to add a YouTube hyperlink? Proper now, in all probability not, however then once more, perhaps, as Twitter continues to build out its monetization tools for customers, that’ll turn into an even bigger consideration, as folks look to monetize their longer movies within the app.
Musk has additionally pledged to provide better revenue share than YouTube, if attainable, and I assume, in idea, if all the pieces have been to go proper, Twitter might turn into an expanded content material hub, which might see extra unique materials posted to the app, and extra customers coming to Twitter, extra typically, to eat it.
However I don’t know – for context, at this level proper now, on this article that you just’re studying, I’m simply now closing in on 2,000 characters. Do you really need double, or 4x this quantity of textual content jammed right into a single tweet?
Twitter has, in fact, tried longer kind textual content earlier than, with its Notes platform that it rolled out last year.
As you possibly can see on this overview, with Notes, you entered your longer textual content right into a devoted, blogging-style window, with customers in a position to embrace as much as 2,500 phrases per put up, together with photos, embedded tweets and extra.
That looks as if a greater format for long-form content material – however Twitter ended the Notes experiment shortly after Musk took over in October final 12 months, with this new variation as a substitute simply making common tweets even longer, with what’s going to find yourself being large partitions of textual content that spool out from a ‘show more’ immediate.
Although there are seemingly quite a lot of customers which are experimenting with longer tweets at current, so there might be some case for them. However then once more, these customers are in all probability seeing good response to their longer tweets as a result of extra individuals are participating with them – as a result of the one method to learn the remainder of the tweet is to click on on it, which then results in better-than-normal interplay charges.
That’s in all probability deceptive, in a metric sense, however perhaps not, and perhaps there’s a demand for ridiculously lengthy tweets that I simply don’t see, together with the expanded monetization potential for longer content material.
As a result of, in fact, with longer content material, video or textual content, Twitter may also insert extra adverts, and that might be key to Musk’s broader plans for creator revenue share, in allocating a share of any adverts proven in long-form posts with the creators of them. Musk has promised to implement an ad revenue share system primarily based on tweets, although he hasn’t truly finished it as but, and perhaps, that is the place he’s headed with longer uploads, constructing in additional capability to pay creators for his or her content material.
But it surely simply feels somewhat misplaced. At this level, this text is now as much as 4k characters, areas included, which offers some extra context on how a lot you possibly can truly slot in a 10k character tweet.
The textual content formatting choices, in the meantime, have been in development for a while, and will add one thing new to the Twitter expertise.
Although it’s probably not new, as Twitter already supports Unicode functionality, which implies that you’ve all the time been in a position to make use of textual content formatting choices in tweets, in the event you actually needed.
It’s simply not native, or intuitive – and perhaps, by including them into the composer, that’ll get extra folks dressing up their tweets with totally different textual content shows.
But it surely’s a bit wealthy that Twitter’s asking you to pay for these options. Like, you get the good thing about giving us extra of your unique content material, for the low, low worth of $8 monthly, and if you wish to monetize longer kind content material – i.e. earn money from Twitter – it’s a must to pay for the privilege. Which isn’t actually how that equation is meant to work, however that’s the place we’re at.
And once more, for context, this text is now round 5k characters lengthy, areas included. Twitter Blue customers will now be capable to put up a single tweet that’s double this size.
Is that what folks need? We’ll discover out.