Twitter to double length of its tweets to 280

Twitter is set to double the length of characters per tweet from 140 characters to 280.  

Twitter said on Tuesday that it would begin a test with a random sample of users allowing them to send tweets that are as long as 280 characters, double the existing cap, in most languages around the world.

The tech company has stood by its short messaging template in the past but the company said it was trialing the new system as it said users tweeting in English and Spanish struggled to express themselves. 

In a blog announcement, Twitter said just 0.4 per cent of tweets sent in Japanese have 140 characters, compared to nine per cent of English language tweets. 

The trial will be rolled out to a small number of users and will run for an unspecified number of weeks in all languages expect Chinese, Japanese and Korean. The company declined to say how many people would be included in the test.