Twitter gave you 280 characters, and your tweets got shorter
But you're more polite than you used to be.
You'd have thought having 280 characters to tweet would free up our inner Hemingway. Turns out, old habits die hard and we're still posting short tweets, according to data Twitter released Tuesday.
The company's latest analysis showed the length of tweets has barely changed since the character limit was doubled last year. The most common tweet length under the 140-character limit was 34 characters. With double the breathing room, the most common length is 33 characters.
In the past, 9 percent of tweets ran up against the 140-character limit. Now, only about about 1 percent of posts written in English smack into the 280-character limit, the company said. Globally, 6 percent of all tweets go over 140 characters and 3 percent are longer than 190 characters. "Less work to fit thoughts into tweets and short tweets remain the norm!" the company said.
Still, people appear to be taking advantage of the increased room in some cases. Twitter said users write out "please" and "thank you" more often since the character limit doubled last year. Abbreviations are also used less.
"We're seeing abbreviations such as 'gr8' (-36%), 'b4' (-13%), and 'sry' (-5%) decline in favor of proper words like 'great' (+32%), 'before' (+70%), and 'sorry' (+31%)," the company said.