Twitter has reportedly lifted the classic 140-character limit from its direct messages feature as part of an ongoing drive to overhaul the service.
Starting in July, messages on Twitter will run as long as the user likes, turning the service into much more of a typical instant message and group chat service.
While regular tweets will still be capped off at 140 characters, direct messages will now have a maximum count of 10,000 characters.
Twitter’s product manager for direct messages, Sachin Agarwal, made the announcement in a post notifying developers to update their apps and services to accommodate the new limit.
The move is being dubbed as ‘sensible’ because the 140-character limit on messages was seen as a nuisance as they were meant to be private and not the same type of quick info byte as a tweet.
It’ll also be a huge help to companies that run customer service on Twitter. Twitter has already made it easier for companies to do that by giving them the option to let anyone initiate a DM, and now they’ll be able to send long messages back and forth, rather than being arbitrarily restricted.