Birds twittering longer

A few days ago Twitter announced some changes to their tweet limitation.

What will be included in a message's 140-character count?

• When replying to a tweet, tagged @names at the beginning of the reply no longer will be included in the character count.
• Photos, GIFs, videos, polls and quote tweets no longer will be counted against the character limit.
• Tweets that begin with a username will be delivered to all followers of that user. Previously, a period had to be inserted before the username, otherwise the tweet would be seen only by the followers of the writer of the tweet and any other usernames in the tweet.
• Users will be able to retweet and quote tweet themselves.

In my opinion, the changes won't have any positive impact to user growth. Some of the changes are reasonable and help the power users at first. The self-tweeting is rather a new form of spam, caused in people's timelines.

I like twitter because of the decoupled communication, based on a hashtag or communication lists. During a conference it is possible to get together with other participants, comment the keynotes and to contact the organiser in the real-time. Only for the duration of the event.

On the other hand, the timelines are sort of confusing, complex and chaotic. It is easy to miss some news.

For more details: Twitter Loosens Tweet's Leash