Twitter Introduces 10,000 Character Long Tweets For Blue Subscribers



Twitter has introduced a new feature that will let Blue subscribers post 10,000 character-long posts – as if the social network is trying to compete with a rival newsletter platform. Along with this, Twitter has also added support for bold and italic text formatting, TechCrunch reported.

In February, the social network introduced 4,000-character long tweets for Blue subscribers to encourage people to publish longer posts instead of threads, TechCrunch also reported.

The @TwitterWrite account posted the following on April 12, 2023:

“We’re making improvements to the writing and reading experience on Twitter! Starting today, Twitter now supports Tweets up to 100,000 characters in length, with bold and italic text formatting.

Sign up for Twitter Blue to access these new features, and apply to enable Subscriptions on your account to earn income directly on Twitter. Tap on “Monetization” in settings to apply today.”

According to TechCrunch, the company’s push for long-form writing comes at a time when Elon Musk is introducing creator monetization tools. On Thursday, he announced that creators can apply for monetization and offer subscriptions to users. For the next 12 months, Twitter will give all money to creators after paying Apple or Google their 30% cut. Post that, the Apple/Google tax will reduce to 15% and the social media company will take a small fee from creators.

Currently, creators can offer subscriptions at per-month prices of $2.99, $4.99, and $9.99. Twitter’s rules indicate that creators need to be at least 18 years old, they need to have 10,000 active users, and they need to have tweeted at least 25 times in the last 30 days to be eligible for monetization.

Engadget reported while a 10,000-character limit sounds excessive for most casual users – that’s around 2,000 words, or a pretty lengthy essay – Twitter likely introduced the capability for people looking to make money off their posts. The company just rebranded “SuperFollows” as “Subscriptions,” allowing users to charge people for exclusive content, including subscriber-only chats in Spaces. Twitter also promised not to take any of their earnings for the next 12 months.

Personally, I’m not interested in this new, 10,000 character feature that Twitter has rolled out. It seems to me that in order to use it, you need to purchase Twitter Blue, apply for monetization, and have at least 10,000 active users. That’s not likely to work for the majority of Twitter users.

There are other options available for those who want to write long-form posts. You could decide to get a Substack account. According to Substack, it is free to get started. If you turn on paid subscriptions, Substack will keep a 10% cut of revenues for operation costs like development and customer support.

Another option is to get a Tumblr account, where you can post pretty much anything you want for free. If Tumblr isn’t your thing, you could set up a blog of your own. There’s plenty of options out there beyond Twitter Blue.