It is a relief to me, believe it or not, to be able to talk about Twitter by reporting news about the service, and not about the erratic decisions of its new owner, Elon Musk. This coming month of October will mark 15 years since I created my first account on the service, back in October 2008, and although I feel more and more jaded when it comes to social networks (as happens to the vast majority of the folks, I don’t consider myself special on this point), I am not going to deny that, without detracting from the rest, for a long time it has been the one that I find most interesting in terms of its mechanics.
Something that we cannot deny Musk, whether we like him better or worse (in my case I already clarified my opinion at the moment he decided to censor several journalists), is his desire to innovate, to step on the accelerator in relation to the addition of new functions, as well as the improvement of the existing ones and yes, also in many cases the elimination of those that, for whatever reason, you think should not remain on the social network. Twitter, in that respect, is moving at lightning speed, something that with the previous management team only happened during his last year or so at the helm.
In addition, due to his “management style” (in other words, his ego the size of a supermassive black hole), we have already gotten used to the fact that he himself, through his personal account, is the one who reports on the jobs that are are being carried out at all times (or those that are going to start shortly, since they are ideas that have just occurred to you). Who needs a leaker, when the CEO of the company himself is the one in charge of revealing so much early information about the news?
Thus, if we compile some of his latest messages in this regard, we find three changes that will arrive on Twitter soon, one of which will mean a significant change in the model followed up to now by the social network. A change that I understand is demanded by quite a few users, but which in my opinion represents the definitive resignation by Twitter of what, since its first day, has been key to its identity.
I’m talking, of course, about the maximum length of tweets. As you recall, for the first few years their length was limited to 140 characters (the good old days), a limit that was doubled to 280 in September 2017. At the time that seemed like a huge leap, but now it pales, since Musk already confirmed a few weeks ago, and now it is expected to happen in early February, the character limit per message will be increased to 4,000.
Another novelty, also advanced by Musk through his account, is a interface change that will make it easier to save tweets. It’s not that it’s particularly complicated these days, really, you just need to click on “Share” and the save function will be displayed in the menu. However, with this change to Twitter’s interface, each tweet will display a save button, so there’s no need to pull down the menu anymore.
and one more, this one announced today Also by Musk, in the same message in which he has confirmed the arrival of the previous novelty, is that its interface will now allow you to switch between recommended tweets and tweets from followed accounts using the scroll left and righta touch control system popularized by contacts apps and that has gained a lot of popularity for some time now.
