Twitter will relax its 140-character limit

UPDATED
The big news in today’s announcement from Twitter: media attachments (images, video, links, polls) will no longer “count” against the 140-character limit that is the platform’s defining characteristic.

When will it happen?

Sometime “over the coming months.”

Other changes:

• The user-name(s) that leads a “reply” (an @ tweet that is a REPLY not a brand-new tweet) will not count. Other (added, not auto-populated – I think) user names in the tweet will count against the total 140-character limit. For a brand new tweet that starts with an @ handle … it sounds like the user name will count towards the character limit. You will read news articles that get this wrong. Blame the initial blog post/announcement. Blame the complexity.
• You can retweet your own tweets. (There will be a button to RT or Quote Tweet.)

Only @ names auto-populated at the start of a reply will not count toward the 140 limit. More here:https://t.co/pRXJ8QIrvI

— Twitter (@Twitter) May 24, 2016

There is conflicting/confusing information about the visibility of an @ reply.

Currently, the only people will see an @ reply in their timelines are those who follow both you and the person you’re talking to. If you want to lead a tweet with someone’s username, but have the tweet show up in everyone’s timeline who is following you, just put a “.” in front of the name, like so: .@kegill.

This is the Twitter news release/blog post statement, broken into two paragraphs and with emphasis added.

Goodbye, .@:
New Tweets that begin with a username will reach all your followers. (That means you’ll no longer have to use the ”.@” convention, which people currently use to broadcast Tweets broadly.)

If you want a reply to be seen by all your followers, you will be able to Retweet it to signal that you intend for it to be viewed more broadly.

However, in conversation, Twitter is nullifying that first sentence, thusly:

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/735145797637963782

You got it. If you want to have your reply broadcast to everyone, you'll be able to Retweet your reply.

— Twitter (@Twitter) May 24, 2016

I’m interpreting Twitter’s response to mean only this:

If you want a reply to be seen by all your followers, you should Retweet it.

What’s not clear is this:

Is Twitter going to nullify the .@ reply as a tool to share a tweet broadly?

I asked … still waiting for an answer.

.@twitter Is Twitter going to nullify the .@ reply as a tool to share a tweet broadly? Blog post is not clear.

— ⚡️Kathy E Gill | Staying at home (@kegill) May 24, 2016

Update

Twitter continues to confirm that the behavior of @ replies is not changing. But no response to my question about the “.” before the @.

 

Awesome. So people who don't follow both parties still won't see the Tweets that start with @___?

— Michael Coley (@mcoley) May 24, 2016

 

We're not changing the rules for who sees your replies. Just giving you all 140 characters to have your conversation!

— Twitter (@Twitter) May 24, 2016