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You Can Now Get More from Twitter's 140 Characters

For over 10 years, Twitter users have been rearranging, rephrasing and rewriting their posts to fit within the bitesized 140 character limit. As Twitter has grown over the years, so has the ability to add more and more additional features to your tweet whilst keeping the quick and snappy style that Twitter's known for.

Polls, GIFs, photos, Periscope broadcasts and more allow you to share more content with your followers, but these additional options have always come at a character-killing cost. Well... until now that is.

So, you can already do a lot in a Tweet, but we want you to be able to do even more. Todd Sherman (@tdd), Sr. Product Manager, Twitter

Yesterday, Twitter announced over on their blog that very soon users will have more freedom with how they use their 140 character allowance and tweet add-ons will no longer have an effect on tweet length.

​Media Attachments

Photos, GIFs, polls, videos and quoted tweets will no longer take up characters; leaving you a full 140 to talk about just how cute that kitten really is.

​@REPLIES

Ever got caught up in a Twitter conversation where you only have 8 characters left to use after all of the usernames have been added? Good news! Usernames will soon be exempt from the character count in replies.

​Retweet & Quote yourself

If that artsy photo of your lunch or your witty joke didn't get the high reaction that it deserves, you will soon be able to retweet or quote your own tweets; bringing them back into the spot light.

​Sorry @. It's retirement time

Twitter has finally made .@ (a trick used to get tweets starting with a username seen by all of your followers, not just those who are also following the mentioned user) a redundant tool. Tweets which begin with a username will now be shown to all of your followers. You'll even be able to make your replies visible to all followers by retweeting your tweet as mentioned above.

Over the next few months Twitter will be rolling out these new updates and we can't wait! There are also even more updates to follow which will no doubt turn Twitter into an even more powerful marketing tool for your business.