280-Character Tweets Are Coming To Your Timeline

Twitter Inc TWTR is testing its latest initiative to increase user engagement: longer tweets. In a blog post Tuesday, product manager Aliza Rosen said Twitter is testing out 280-character tweets, double the current 140-character limit.

“We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter, so we're doing something new: we're going to try out a longer limit, 280 characters, in languages impacted by cramming (which is all except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean),” Rosen wrote.

According to Twitter’s data, 9 percent of English tweets hit the current 140-character limit. Rosen says the character limit can be frustrating for users. For now, Twitter is only testing the higher limit on a select group of users before making a decision on whether to roll out the change for all of its users.

Benzinga asked Twitter users what they thought of expanding character limits, and only 36 percent of respondents favored the change.

What do you think of 280-character tweets? cc @jack $TWTR #Twitter280

— Benzinga.com (@Benzinga) September 26, 2017

Twitter stock has stabilized somewhat in 2017 after years of steady declines. Twitter has struggled to grow and monetize its massive user base, and the stock is now trading 35 percent below its 2013 IPO price of $26.

In August, Jefferies analyst Brent Thill downgraded Twitter stock from Buy to Hold and conceded that Facebook Inc FB is the “clear winner” in the social media space (see Thill's track record here).

Related Link: Internet Stock Catalysts: What's Ahead, Who Will Benefit And Who's At Risk