Twitter is rumored to be considering increasing its per-tweet character count from 140 to 10,000 – a potential move that instantly sent the troubled tech company’s share price into a tailspin.

Twitter shares plummeted more than 2% on the news, first reported by Re/code on Tuesday, which seemed to undermine the essential nature of the short-form social media platform. The company’s shares ended down 2.97% at $21.89, a new low.

The tech company is attempting to grow beyond its 300 million-strong user base, and many are skeptical that Twitter will be able to do that successfully enough to address the elephant in the boardroom: Facebook.



Under recently appointed CEO (and company co-founder) Jack Dorsey, Twitter has lost much of its reluctance to tinker with its most basic functions in the face of stagnating growth. Dorsey took to the service on Tuesday after the report provoked controversy among users, and while he did not confirm the upcoming 10,000-character limit in so many words, he did say that the character limit was up for debate.

“We’ve spent a lot of time observing what people are doing on Twitter, and we see them taking screenshots of text and tweeting it,” Dorsey wrote, appropriately, in a screenshot of a block of text. “Instead, what if that text... was actually text? Text that could be searched. Text that could be highlighted.”

Dorsey had harsh words for his predecessors when he took the reins; now the onus is on him to expand the company’s footprint more quickly than they did.

Twitter shares hit a new low Tuesday, closing at $21.89. Photograph: Google

As part of its expansion plan, Twitter is making itself unmistakably more Facebook-like. The service now has a new feature called “moments” – an alternative to the traditional timeline populated with news, entertainment and sports tailored to the user. Twitter also recently added a “while you were away” feature, which curates tweets it thinks the user is most interested in so that people can catch up if they haven’t logged in for a few hours. The company also changed several of the capabilities of its direct messaging service.

Re/code said the feature (which could yet change to a different character count) was due to roll out this quarter. Ten thousand characters is currently the allotted maximum for direct messages on Twitter and usually breaks down to about 2,000 words.

The deep desire to compete with Facebook – which those inside the company have said is market-driven – may not be realistic, a former executive told the Guardian in July as the company’s extended search for a new CEO (eventually Dorsey) began to raise eyebrows. “The only answer, which I don’t think is feasible, is to say, ‘You know what, we’re going to be the best damn 300 million-monthly-active-user [service] we think we can be,’ and not aim for Facebook-like scale.”