Why does Twitter limit tweets to 140 characters? Why this number? What are pros and cons of this design?

1. Why are tweets limited to 140 characters?
2. Why is my Twitter character limit still 140?
3. Why does Twitter limit the number of tweets I see?
4. Is Twitter limited to 140 characters?
5. Why did Twitter change its character limit?

Why are tweets limited to 140 characters?

The 140-character limit was originally established to reflect the length of SMS messages, which was how tweets were distributed prior to the development of mobile apps. SMS messages are limited to 160 characters; Twitter reserved the remaining 20 for the username.

Why is my Twitter character limit still 140?

Twitter began as an SMS text-based service. This limited the original Tweet length to 140 characters (which was partly driven by the 160 character limit of SMS, with 20 characters reserved for commands and usernames).

Why does Twitter limit the number of tweets I see?

Why have limits? Limits alleviate some of the strain on the behind-the-scenes part of Twitter and reduce downtime and error pages. For the sake of reliability, we've placed some limits on the account actions below.

Is Twitter limited to 140 characters?

Originally, Twitter posts were capped at 140 characters, designed to fit into the official limit for SMS text messages on mobile phones. In 2017, it expanded the tweet limit to 280 characters.

Why did Twitter change its character limit?

Twitter originally had a character limit of 140 before it was increased to 280 in 2017. The exact details of the increase in character limit are not yet known, but previous reports and tweets by Musk suggested Twitter may make it easier for users to break up long chains of texts into multiple tweets part of a thread.