Just when you were an expert on getting your message across in 140 characters or less, Twitter went and changed the rules.
You may have noticed last week that Twitter reduced the limit of characters to 118 for tweets sent with a URL and 117 for tweets sent with an https link. Basically, you now lose 22 characters automatically when you add a URL to your tweet.
Why is this important from a marketer's perspective? Well, remember all those automated Twitter campaigns you have scheduled? Well, you probably made them before this change and many of the tweets may now be too long.
If you are wondering about the technical reasoning behind Twitter's changes, they state that the reduction is due to a change in their t.co link wrapper and how it extends the maximum length of links by two characters. Bottom line, Twitter can do whatever they want at the end of the day and now we all have to adapt. A few fewer characters won't be that hard to get used to going forward but now is the time to go back and check over any automated Twitter campaigns that are currently running.
Our team felt it was very important to let you know about this change and that you should jump back into your scheduled tweets to make sure they comply with these new limits.
