Earlier this week, Twitter lifted its character limit on private messages. The company commented on the change as follows,
"Each of the hundreds of millions of Tweets sent across Twitter every day is an opportunity for you to spark a conversation about what's happening in your world. That's why we've made a number of changes to Direct Messages over the last few months. Today's change is another big step towards making the private side of Twitter even more powerful and fun."
- Sachin Agarwal, Twitter Product Manager
Of course, the changes they're referring to from earlier in the year include group direct messages from January and the direct messages to anyone update which allows you to DM a person even if you aren't following each other, which was put into effect in April.
All three of these changes to the direct messaging platform on Twitter seem to be an effort to stay competitive with messaging apps such as Messenger and WhatsApp.
These updates also are extremely helpful to business users.
Here are three ways your Twitter game will improve after the character limit lifts.
1. You can provide better customer support
Not only will customers be able to supply you with a full description of an issue or a compliment they want to give, but your business can now give a complete solution or 'thank you' back to the user. Both sides will no longer have to worry about being forced to send multiple messages in order to include a screenshot and a description-it can easily be all in one!
In combination with the 'direct messages to anyone' update (if you allow that in your settings), businesses don't have to worry about following back a user just to be able to lend a helping tweet.
2. You can send out important messages to groups
If you're hosting an event or giving out instructions to winners of a contest, the new direct messages - which allow up to 10,000 characters - will give planners and marketers relief from trying to fit all they have to say in just 140 characters.
I look forward to the day where you can send messages out to Lists you've curated to make this process even easier. See what other people are suggesting in the comments of Twitter's announcement.
Direct Messages now go beyond 140 characters. Go long, express yourself, wax poetic: https://t.co/zr2lnTfOI7 pic.twitter.com/o4eSv6Wv5u
- Twitter (@twitter) August 12, 2015
3. You can have this update on Android, iOS, TweetDeck, twitter.com, AND Twitter for Mac
Sometimes rollouts of features will only start in one place to test for any bugs before releasing to every device the network is available. However, since the 140-character lift has been recorded as the No. 1 request amongst users, Twitter felt confident in applying the update to ALL of their apps. So no matter where you're trying to respond to a customer, you'll have the ability to do so with more than 140 characters.
And now, we are just waiting for the day where we can edit a tweet.
Baby steps.
Are you excited about this update? Let us know in the comments.
This post originally appeared on the Pagemodo blog