Twitter’s Direct Messaging Just Got a Whole Lot Longer

A tweet is a 140 characters. You can add links, pictures, even videos. But you get 140 characters to express yourself, no more.

The same used to be true of a direct message (DM) sent through Twitter. No more. As of this week, Twitter is allowing users to really open up and speak their mind… so long as their mind’s thoughts are directed at a single individual.

Twitter has officially raised the character limit of a DM from 140 to 1000.

It makes sense (in the opinion of someone sporadically who uses DMs). I don’t worry as much about making everything retweetable or even digestible in a single DM, the way that I would in a tweet. I just hit send when I’m almost out of characters, no matter where I am in the sentence (I personally will not send a DM mid-word, although I am sure plenty of folks do). Then I just keep typing.

If you have never connected with someone through a DM, give it a shot. Not sure who to write? Drop me a line and start enjoying all of that roomy new messaging real estate.

One note: if you try through your phone or tablet and you are still limited to your 140 characters, you probably just need to update Twitter on your device. If you do that and it still doesn’t solve the problem, drop me a (short) DM, or an email, and we can brainstorm it together.

Happy long-form messaging.