Twitter DM limit removed, letting users send direct messages as long as they like

The 140-character limit on tweets definitely won't be removed

The Twitter logo is displayed on a banner outside the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on November 7, 2013 in New York City (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Twitter has finally and officially removed the 140-character limit on direct messages, allowing people to send huge, long private messages to one another.

The network says that the new limitless DMs are intended to make “the private side of Twitter even more powerful and fun”. Tweets have the same character limit, and that won’t be removed.

“While Twitter is largely a public experience, Direct Messages let you have private conversations about the memes, news, movements, and events that unfold on Twitter,” the site said, announcing the change.

Twitter has been making a number of changes to DMs in recent months. It recently rolled out group chats for the platform and the ability to send direct messages to people they don't follow.

The change is being rolled out to the apps for Android and iOS, TweetDeck and Twitter for Mac as well as Twitter.com. “It will continue to roll out worldwide over the next few weeks,” the company said in a blog post.

People who send their DMs using text messages will still have the limit, since it is imposed by networks rather than Twitter itself. The limit of text messages was how Twitter’s limit came into place, so that people could send their updates before the proliferation of smartphones.

Twitter confirmed that nothing will change about public tweets — which are very unlikely ever to lose their limit, since they are such a famous part the service.

“Tweets will continue to be the 140 characters they are today, rich with commentary as well as photos, videos, links, Vines, gifs, and emoji,” the company wrote in its post announcing the change. “So, start working on those sonnets.”

While Twitter has never suggested that it will change the limit for tweets, it has gradually been adding more multimedia features so that limit can be circumvented. If users link to a vine or a picture, for instance, it will embed, and users can quote tweets without wasting characters on doing so.