Twitter Changes Will Let You Retweet Yourself, Exclude Mentions From Character Limit

Have you ever tweeted something you thought was clever, but no one paid attention to it? Well, Twitter is letting you retweet yourself now.

In a recent blog post, Twitter outlined some of the changes coming to the way that you tweet. Media attachments, such as photos, polls, and quote tweets, will no longer count towards your character limit, nor will mentions (@ names). In addition, Twitter is letting you retweet and quote tweet yourself now. The reason for that is explained below.

It’s not immediately clear when these changes will go into effect, and the only timeframe the post gives is “soon” and “in the coming months.”

Here are all the updates coming:

Replies: When replying to a Tweet, @ names will no longer count toward the 140-character count. This will make having conversations on Twitter easier and more straightforward, no more penny-pinching your words to ensure they reach the whole group.

Media attachments: When you add attachments like photos, GIFs, videos, polls, or Quote Tweets, that media will no longer count as characters within your Tweet. More room for words!

Retweet and Quote Tweet yourself: We’ll be enabling the Retweet button on your own Tweets, so you can easily Retweet or Quote Tweet yourself when you want to share a new reflection or feel like a really good one went unnoticed.

Goodbye, .@: These changes will help simplify the rules around Tweets that start with a username. New Tweets that begin with a username will reach all your followers. (That means you’ll no longer have to use the “.@” convention, which people currently use to broadcast Tweets broadly.) If you want a reply to be seen by all your followers, you will be able to Retweet it to signal that you intend for it to be viewed more broadly.

The post also teases “plans to help you get even more from your Tweets,” and the company says it is “exploring ways to make existing uses easier and enable new ones, all without compromising the unique brevity and speed that make Twitter the best place for live commentary, connections, and conversations.”