Twitter doubles character limit to 280

The tweets of your friends, frenemies, favorite celebrities, and hate follows can now be twice as long. Twitter has begun testing 280-character limit to tweets. The social network claims only nine percent of all tweets right now are exactly 140 characters and that users have to edit their initial thoughts to fit under the original limit. Twitter claims it hopes to lessen the burden on “languages impacted by cramming,” which is most languages except for the likes of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, and have people tweet more. Now, we can’t say whether this will improve the quality of tweets or not. The 140-character limit was initially set to reflect SMS message length.

This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence! https://t.co/TuHj51MsTu

— jack (@jack) September 26, 2017

Source: The Verge

Fox is premiering new show ‘Ghosted’ on Twitter

Twitter has undeniably been a good TV companion for a lot of its users when new episodes of hit shows are aired. It makes sense the social network wants to capitalize on that with its new partnership with Fox. They will be premiering the pilot of a new paranormal comedy called Ghosted at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Twitter between September 21^st and 24^th. The show will be airing on TV on October 1^st. Each airing of the episode will precede an introduction of the show by its stars Adam Scott and Craig Robinson and a Q&A session on the platform. You can submit your questions via the hashtag #GhostedPremiere.

Aside from that, there is also a pre-show stream for each episode of Empire’s latest season starting September 20^th at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time (which is 30 minutes before the show starts in the US). Fox also started showing on September 19^th The Mick star Kaitlin Olson’s favorite episodes from the first season. It’s an interesting marketing move that can benefit the shows from the buzz and Twitter for getting people to use its service again.

Source: Engadget + The Verge

Microsoft shuts down Surface Support Twitter account

It’s not the first time Microsoft has shut down a support account on Twitter. The company shut down @LumiaHelp before when the Lumia brand went away. And now the brand is doing something similar with @SurfaceSupport, but it doesn’t mean they are shutting down Surface, despite its recent controversy. Instead, Microsoft looks like they want to consolidate their support account under one handle. The company is urging users to reach out to @MicrosoftHelps for any device or service inquiry.

Source: MS Power User

Twitter reportedly tries out tool to flag fake news

The fight against fake news is something social networks have to contend with. Facebook is taking a lot of fire for this but Twitter isn’t without this issue, too, add on the abuse against women and minorities on the service. But Twitter seems to be doing something about it. Or at least they’re working on it. Sources have told the Washington Post that Twitter has a prototype feature that lets you flag tweets that contain fake news and harmful content.

There aren’t solid plans on whether this tool will be released but the idea behind it is that users will get a flag option in the drop-down menu that appears with tweets. And while Twitter won’t commit to an official launch of the feature, it’s something the service really needs. As TNW points out, the number of Twitter bots that are on the service have the capability to spread fake news quickly and rapidly.

Source: 9to5 Google