Tech

Tweeting a Web link? That’ll cost you 2 characters

Josh Peterson Tech Editor
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Twitter will increase the character length of shortened links in February, further encouraging its users to communicate with an economy of phrase.

“We’d like to share some upcoming changes to our t.co link wrapper with the ecosystem,” said Jason Costa from Platform at Twitter announced on Twitter’s developer blog Thursday.

“We’re going to be extending the maximum length of t.co wrapped links from 20 to 22 characters for non-https URLs, and 21 to 23 characters for https URLs,” he said.

The changes will take effect on February 20, 2013, giving developers time to update their Twitter applications to account for the update.

“Ensure that your application is prepared to handle this change by that date,” said Costas.

Users are already grumbling about how the change will affect their ability to communicate ideas in under the 140 character limit the company is famous for.

Several users expressed their dissatisfaction in response to a Fast Company blog post about the change Friday.

“Two extra characters would be great, two less is detrimental! I already struggle to contain my tweets,” said one commenter.

“Is this supposed to be an upgrade? I’m sure this will bring with it some measure of pain and annoyance. I really enjoy it when I send out a tweet with 0 characters left,” complained another.

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Josh Peterson