Twitter Blue Subscribers Can Now Put up 10k Character Tweets

Twitter’s added one other component to its Twitter Blue subscription package deal, with Blue members now capable of write tweets up to 10,000 characters long, whereas they’ll additionally make the most of textual content formatting choices, like daring and italics, offering extra artistic alternatives.

Which is cool, I suppose. I imply, I’m undecided that anybody really desires to learn a 10k character tweet, however good to have the choice. I suppose.

Twitter Blue subscribers might already publish tweets up to 4k characters in length, offering expanded alternative to share extra in-depth posts. However even these are slightly annoying, with the tweets minimize off after the primary 280 characters in-stream. You then must faucet by to learn the remainder, which feels considerably counter-intuitive for Twitter and its conventional UI.

However perhaps it simply takes some getting used to – in any occasion, Twitter chief Elon Musk appears satisfied {that a} key barrier to individuals posting longer content material within the app is the prevailing size restrictions, and that by eradicating them, and increasing what’s doable, that may see extra customers sharing extra of their unique content material to the platform direct, versus linking individuals off to their WordPress web site, or YouTube within the case of video uploads.

Which is one other component of Twitter Blue, with subscribers additionally able to post videos up to 60 minutes long, nevertheless it stays to be seen whether or not customers actually need to lean again and watch an hour lengthy clip within the tweet feed.

Does it actually matter to creators whether or not they have so as to add a YouTube hyperlink? Proper now, in all probability not, however then once more, perhaps, as Twitter continues to construct out its monetization instruments for customers, that’ll turn out to be a much bigger consideration, as individuals look to monetize their longer movies within the app.

Musk has additionally pledged to provide better revenue share than YouTube, if doable, and I suppose, in concept, if every thing have been to go proper, Twitter might turn out to be an expanded content material hub, which might see extra unique materials posted to the app, and extra customers coming to Twitter, extra typically, to devour it.

However I don’t know – for context, at this level proper now, on this article that you simply’re studying, I’m simply now closing in on 2,000 characters. Do you really need double, or 4x this quantity of textual content jammed right into a single tweet?

Twitter has, after all, tried longer kind textual content earlier than, with its Notes platform that it rolled out final 12 months.

As you may see on this overview, with Notes, you entered your longer textual content right into a devoted, blogging-style window, with customers capable of embrace as much as 2,500 phrases per publish, together with pictures, embedded tweets and extra.

That looks as if a greater format for long-form content material – however Twitter ended the Notes experiment shortly after Musk took over in October final 12 months, with this new variation as a substitute simply making common tweets even longer, with what’s going to find yourself being huge partitions of textual content that spool out from a ‘present extra’ immediate.

Although there are seemingly a variety of customers which can be experimenting with longer tweets at current, so there might be some case for them. However then once more, these customers are in all probability seeing good response to their longer tweets as a result of extra persons are partaking with them – as a result of the one method to learn the remainder of the tweet is to click on on it, which then results in better-than-normal interplay charges.

That’s in all probability deceptive, in a metric sense, however perhaps not, and perhaps there’s a demand for ridiculously lengthy tweets that I simply don’t see, together with the expanded monetization potential for longer content material.

As a result of, after all, with longer content material, video or textual content, Twitter can even insert extra advertisements, and that might be key to Musk’s broader plans for creator income share, in allocating a proportion of any advertisements proven in long-form posts with the creators of them. Musk has promised to implement an ad revenue share system based mostly on tweets, although he hasn’t really finished it as but, and perhaps, that is the place he’s headed with longer uploads, constructing in additional capability to pay creators for his or her content material.

However it simply feels slightly misplaced. At this level, this text is now as much as 4k characters, areas included, which gives some extra context on how a lot you may really slot in a 10k character tweet.

The textual content formatting choices, in the meantime, have been in improvement for some time, and will add one thing new to the Twitter expertise.

Although it’s probably not new, as Twitter already supports Unicode functionality, which implies that you’ve at all times been ready to make use of textual content formatting choices in tweets, in the event you actually needed.

It’s simply not native, or intuitive – and perhaps, by including them into the composer, that’ll get extra individuals dressing up their tweets with totally different textual content shows.

However it’s a bit wealthy that Twitter’s asking you to pay for these options. Like, you get the good thing about giving us extra of your unique content material, for the low, low value of $8 monthly, and if you wish to monetize longer kind content material – i.e. generate income from Twitter – you must pay for the privilege. Which isn’t actually how that equation is meant to work, however that’s the place we’re at.

And once more, for context, this text is now round 5k characters lengthy, areas included. Twitter Blue customers will now be capable of publish a single tweet that’s double this size.

Is that what individuals need? We’ll discover out.