Jack Dorsey hints Twitter to lift 140-character limit

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey strongly hinted on Tuesday that the service may soon lift its trademark 140-character limit.

The company has been exploring extending the length permitted in a tweet on the service for months.

The character limit for tweets could grow to 10,000, the same limit on direct messages on its service, a source familiar with the situation said. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The earliest a change would take place is late March, the person said.

Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser declined to comment.

Dorsey didn't directly confirm Twitter would drop its 140-character limit but made an argument designed to sway naysayers that such a move made sense. In a screenshot of a 10-paragraph tweet, well in excess of that limit, he discussed how people are already circumventing it just as he was.

"We've spent a lot of time observing what people are doing on Twitter and we see them taking screenshots of text and tweeting it," he wrote. "Instead, what if that text...was actually text? Text that could be searched. Text that could be highlighted. That's more utility and power.

"What makes Twitter, Twitter is its fast, public, live conversational nature. We will always work to strengthen that."

Twitter may remove 140-character limit

How it would work: 140 characters of a tweet would be visible in the timeline. Clicking on the tweet would reveal the rest of the tweet. Users would be given the option to write beyond 140 characters but would be warned that users would not see the rest of the tweet unless they expanded it.

In his tweet Tuesday, Dorsey said Twitter's "beautiful constraint" inspires "creativity and brevity," but he also noted room for innovation.

Dorsey has pledged to challenge long-held beliefs and conventions at Twitter in an attempt to reignite user growth.

Twitter shares fall on stalled user growth, forecast

"I’ve challenged our teams to look beyond assumptions about what makes Twitter the best play to share what's happening. I'm confident our ideas will result in the service that’s far easier to understand and much more powerful," Dorsey said during the company's third-quarter conference call.

Twitter announced lackluster user growth and a weak forecast in the third quarter, causing the stock to plunge and dampening excitement about the return of co-founder Dorsey, whose return seemed to promise a shot at unlocking Twitter's untapped potential. The third quarter, the three months ended in September, unfolded on his watch. Dorsey was serving as interim CEO before Twitter appointed him CEO in October.

Twitter shares (TWTR) on Tuesday fell more than 2.8% to $21.92, well below its initial public offering price of $25.

Follow USA TODAY senior technology writer Jessica Guynn @jguynn