Social media site Twitter has announced it is rolling out a new 280 character limit for users around the world.

The website launched a test phase back in September for a small percentage of users.

The company says: "Our goal was to make this possible while ensuring we keep the speed and brevity that makes Twitter, Twitter.

"Looking at all the data, we're excited to share we've achieved this goal and are rolling the change out to all languages where cramming was an issue."

It says during the test many people tweeted the full 280 limit because it was new and novel, but soon after this people's behaviour normalised.

"We saw when people needed to use more than 140 characters, they tweeted more easily and more often.

"But importantly, people tweeted below 140 most of the time and the brevity of Twitter remained."

 

Source: Twitter

It says historically, 9% of Tweets in English hit the character limit, reflecting "the challenge of fitting a thought into a tweet".

Twitter says this often results in lots of time spent editing and, at times, abandoning tweets before sending.

"We are making this change after listening and observing a problem our global community was having (it wasn't easy enough to tweet!), studying data to understand how we could improve, trying it out, and listening to your feedback."

However Japanese, Korean, and Chinese users will continue to have 140 characters "because cramming is not an issue in these languages".

The roll out begins from 9.00pm GMT on Tuesday.

Additional reporting: Jessica Kelly