280 characters: Twitter tests Notes function

Anyone who follows Karl Lauterbach on Twitter, for example, will already have wondered about the strange spellings. The very special Twitter prose is caused by the strict character limit of the platform: More than 140 characters per post are not possible. Until now, this restriction could only be circumvented via threads, i.e. several tweets related to each other and thus stitched together. Now, however, Twitter is planning a new function that will make longer individual posts possible.

Test phase started

As Twitter has announced in a blog post, a test phase with the new Notes function has already started. Within the scope of this, however, only a few members of the platform will be given the opportunity to write longer posts. These posts will be treated like normal tweets and will be publicly accessible accordingly. However, this only applies to certain regions – and Germany is not one of them, at least not yet.

Anyone who visits Twitter’s information area and follows a link to one of the first Notes posts will receive the following error message: “Notes aren’t available to read in your region yet. Follow @TwitterWrite for announcements and updates about Notes, or read more in our Help Center”. When exactly the Notes function – at least for the pure reception – will be released in Germany is not yet known.

What’s next for Twitter?

The possibility of publishing longer tweets already represents a significant change in the service, but so far lies precisely in the brevity of the posts a unique selling point. A similarly strong change in the functional principle had last occurred at the end of 2020 with the introduction of self-deleting fleets. In the near future, however, the service could face much bigger changes: Elon Musk has made a purchase offer and has already put forward various proposals for change. For example, he wants to allow more expressions on Twitter and make the verification of member profiles a paid service. Furthermore, he announced job cuts and sharp performance discrimination in the Twitter workforce. Whether he will actually take over the company in the end is unclear so far, however.