One Year After Twitter Ups its Character Length...

One year after Twitter doubled its character length from 140 to 280 characters, some abbreviations are used a lot less. Twitter tested the lengthier character count in September of last year and fully introduced the change in late October, much to the horror of many of its faithful and opinionated users. Twitter’s report, released yesterday, shows that despite the apocalypse predicted by users of the platform, nothing too major has changed.

The abbreviation ‘b4’ saw a 13 percent drop in usage between August 2017 and August 2018, while the use of the word ‘before’ saw a 70 percent spike between the same time frame. Similar changes registered for certain abbreviations and their original words. The drop in the word ‘gr8’ was practically matched by the rise in the full word ‘great.’ Another notable trend from the switch is the increase in the words ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ with ‘please’ usage increasing by 54 percent and ‘thank you’ usage increasing by 22 percent.