Morgan Stanley: Twitter's Beyond 140 Plan Is 'Desperate'

• Twitter Inc TWTR shares have dipped 44.12 percent over the past year, falling almost down to their 52-week low on Tuesday.
• Morgan Stanley analysts have maintained an Underweight rating on the company, with a price target of $22.
• The company may increase the character limit on individual tweets from the current 140 characters to 10,000 by the end of Q1.

According to the Morgan Stanley report, “Users have essentially raised the limit themselves by using screenshots so they might as well index that text to make it searchable.”

The analysts mentioned that this appears to be a desperate move, given that recent product innovations, including Moments, have failed to reinvigorate user engagement and growth.

The “Beyond 140” move, the analysts say, “is a plan to host content inside TWTR’s walled garden rather than linking to blogs and other websites.”

The analysts believe that this move could transform Twitter into a public blogging platform, from one that is currently “well-suited to quips and breaking news headlines.” However, the company intends to retain the look and feel of its user timeline.

The Morgan Stanley report explained for tweets longer than 140 characters, users would need to click to expand and see the remaining part of the text. Twitter will signal users when they cross the 140 character limit, “as a way to encourage brevity.”