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As Twitter tries to make its “Twitter Blue” subscription more attractive to users, the social media platform recently added a huge perk to its premium subscription service.
Blue members are now able to write tweets up to 10,000 characters long, while they can also utilize text formatting options, like bold and italics, providing more creative opportunities.
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.
— Twitter Write (@TwitterWrite) April 14, 2023
Sign up for Twitter Blue to access these new features, and apply to enable…
It is not clear whether people would read tweets that have more than 4,000 words or how having so many words in a tweet affects the algorithm, however, we can assume that Blue subscribers would be happy to have the option.
Twitter Blue
Like all Twitter users, Blue subscribers could already post tweets up to 4k characters in length, providing expanded opportunities to share more in-depth posts. But even those are a little annoying, the tweets cut off after the first 280 characters in-stream. You then have to tap through to read the rest, which feels somewhat counter-intuitive for Twitter.
Twitter chief Elon Musk seems convinced that the existing length restrictions are a key barrier to people posting longer content in the app. By removing them, and expanding what’s possible, they will see more users sharing more of their original content to the platform directly, as opposed to linking people off to their WordPress site, or YouTube in the case of video uploads.
Twitter Blue subscribers will also be able to post videos up to 60 minutes long, again it’s not clear whether users would watch an hour-long video on Twitter or how it will affect the algorithm.
Musk has also pledged to provide a better revenue share than YouTube. If possible, and, if everything were to go right, Twitter could become an expanded content hub, which would see more original material posted to the app, and more users coming to Twitter, more often, to consume it.
Longer-Form Content
This is not the first time that tried longer-form text with the rollout of its Notes platform last year. Notes, allowed users to enter your longer text into a dedicated, blogging-style window, with users able to include up to 2,500 words per post, along with images, embedded tweets, and more. Twitter ended the Notes experiment shortly after Musk took over in October last year.
✨ Introducing: Notes ✨
— Twitter Write (@TwitterWrite) June 22, 2022
We’re testing a way to write longer on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/SnrS4Q6toX
Seemingly, there are a lot of users that are experimenting with longer tweets at present, so there may well be some case for them. But then again, those users are probably seeing good responses to their longer tweets because more people are engaging with them – the only way to read the rest of the tweet is to click on it, which then leads to better-than-normal interaction rates.
You can access all these features for the low, low price of $8 per month, and if you want to monetize longer form content – i.e. make money from Twitter – you’ll have to pay for the privilege.Â
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