Twitter Blue now allows tweets up to 10,000 characters long

Twitter Blue subscribers can now post up to 10,000 characters in a tweet and format their tweets in bold or italics. It seems like Twitter is trying to expand the subscription service so people actually subscribe.

“Twitter now supports tweets up to 10,000 characters in length, with bold and italic text formatting,” wrote the official Twitter Write(Opens in a new tab) on Thursday. “Sign up for Twitter Blue to access these new features and apply for subscriptions to be activated on your account to start earning revenue directly on Twitter.”

The general mood among Twitter users was, “I don’t read any of this.”(Opens in a new tab)

The tweet may have been deleted
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The tweet may have been deleted
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Twitter previously increased the character limit of its subscribers from 280 to 4,000 in February, by which time the platform had been down for several hours. Thankfully, Twitter has also rolled out a “Show More” feature for users’ feeds, which hides most of a lengthy tweet behind a link. This means you can quickly skip bloat instead of giving yourself an RSI by scrolling through an entire manifest.

The 10,000 character tweets also leverage the Show More feature. However, just like Twitter’s previous character increase, the implementation of formatting and 10,000-character tweets appears faulty(Opens in a new tab). tech blogger Jane Manchun Wong(Opens in a new tab) found several bugs while experimenting with the new features, such as Characters in bold and italics also appeared raw in the iOS mobile app in browsers the characters were duplicated(Opens in a new tab).

Mashable hasn’t reached out to Twitter for comment, as Twitter’s press email automatically responds to all requests with a poop emoji.

The tweet may have been deleted
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Twitter Blue’s new features are undoubtedly designed to make the paid subscription service look more appealing. CEO Elon Musk’s grand plan to monetize Twitter doesn’t seem to be working right now, with only about 3 percent of legacy verified accounts opting for Twitter Blue.

The new 10,000-character posts and formatting options also put Twitter in closer competition with newsletter platform Substack. The two companies are currently feuding after the latter unveiled Substack Notes earlier this month. Similar to Twitter, this new feature allows Substack users to post short messages and share links for other users to reply to or like.

Apparently, Twitter didn’t like the competition and severely restricted links to Substack on its platform. Twitter users can’t like, retweet, comment, or pin tweets with links to substack, and Twitter searches for the word “substack” temporarily returned results for “newsletter” instead.

Twitter’s new 10,000 character tweets go against the entire microblogging culture it has built up to now. Many Twitter users scroll through their feed precisely because they don’t have the time or inclination to read an entire essay. But at least the new formatting features will make it easier to distinguish the blue Twitter subscribers from the old verified accounts.