Twitter is making big changes to tweet replies.
Whenever you reply to an individual or a group of Twitter users, you’ll have more characters to work with. All 140 in fact. The user names of those people won’t subtract from your tweet’s 140 character count, the company has announced.
In addition to reducing constraints on tweet character limits for conversations, Twitter is changing the appearance of replies.
“When reading a conversation, you’ll actually see what people are saying, rather than seeing lots of @usernames at the start of a Tweet,” Twitter said in a blog post.
That means instead of showing a user name at the start of tweets that are replies, you’ll see a line “Replying to @username” appearing below the account handle and above the actual tweet.
Here’s an example, where ’s Executive Editor Kelsey Jones replied to @WTFSEO on Twitter:
Additionally, whenever you tap on the reply button to tweet your replies, Twitter will let you manage which accounts you reply to in that conversation.
For example, if you hit reply to join an ongoing tweet conversation involving three people, you could only reply to one or two of those people if you wanted, or all three. Simply make sure their name has a green check mark next to it.
Twitter said these changes, which are rolling out now to the Twitter site and its apps for iOS and Android, are based on feedback and research. When testing out these changes, Twitter observed higher engagement for conversations.
Image Credit: Twitter