Twitter removes 140-character limit for direct messages

Twitter announced on Thursday that it is expanding the character limit in its direct messages function, from the 140-character limit used in public tweets to a much larger 10,000 characters.

The social media site's developers announced it on their blog on Thursday.

Sachin Agarwal, Twitter's DM head, wrote that the character limit change will launch in July. He also said that this won't change the 140-character limit on public tweets.

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Twitter has been updating its direct message functionality over the past year. It introduced group messaging in January, allowing up to 20 people to read DM threads at once (DMs are typically restricted to one-on-one interactions).

In April, Twitter added the option for users to receive direct messages from anyone, even from accounts they don't follow. The feature has been tested and used by a limited number of accounts since 2013 but only rolled out to general users this year. Before this option was available, users could only receive direct messages from accounts that they followed, and vice versa.

Some tech-savvy commentators praised the upcoming change, while others suggested that it effectively eliminated the difference between Twitter DMs and other private messaging or email clients.