Twitter has introduced longer tweets for subscribers to its Blue service.
However, the social media platform was hit by glitches around the world at a similar time that the longer tweets were launched.
Tweets were previously limited to 280 characters. The higher threshold will initially be available only in the US.
Twitter Blue tweeted: “Need more than 280 characters to express yourself? We know that lots of you do … and while we love a good thread, sometimes you just want to Tweet everything all at once. We get that. So, we're introducing longer Tweets!
“Most standard functions of tweeting still apply, whether you want to post a picture, use a hashtag, or create a poll. But now you can type all the way up to 4,000 characters. For now, longer tweets on web can't be saved as drafts or scheduled to send later. But don’t worry, Twitter is still Twitter.”
The new longer tweets will be capped at 280 characters on a user's timeline to avoid significant scrolling, with a “show more” prompt to click and read the whole tweet.
Twitter said that while only Blue subscribers can post longer tweets, anyone can read them.
“You can reply to, retweet, and quote tweet a longer tweet, no matter if you’re a Twitter Blue subscriber or not,” it said. “Subscribers will be able to reply and QT with up to 4,000 characters.”
The Twitter Blue subscription adds a blue check mark to an account and offers other early access to features such as edit tweet, longer video, NFT profile pictures and custom app icons.
The initial launch of Twitter Blue led to turmoil as a wave of fake accounts with the new blue ticks parodied US presidents, well-known dead people and large companies.
The blue check mark was previously reserved for the verified accounts of politicians, famous personalities, journalists and other public figures.
Newly created Twitter accounts are not able to subscribe to Twitter Blue for 90 days.
The subscription service was launched by new owner Elon Musk following his $44 billion acquisition in October to raise new revenue.
He said the company was losing $4 million a day. However, earlier this week, he tweeted that the company was now in a stronger financial position.
“Last 3 months were extremely tough, as had to save Twitter from bankruptcy, while fulfilling essential Tesla & SpaceX duties,” he said.
“Wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone. Twitter still has challenges, but is now trending to break even if we keep at it. Public support is much appreciated!
“To be extra clear, Twitter is definitely not financially healthy yet, but is trending to be so. Lots of work still needed to get there.”
Twitter Blue has now been expanded to 12 regions, including Saudi Arabia.
Twitter also recently outlined plans to start charging for its API access, although on Thursday it confirmed that it would extend free access through February 13.
It said a “new form of free access will be introduced as this is extremely important to our ecosystem, limited to Tweet creation of up to 1,500 tweets per month for a single authenticated user token, including Login with Twitter”.
Meanwhile, the company admitted on Wednesday that its platform “may not be working as expected for some of you”.
“Sorry for the trouble. We're aware and working to get this fixed.”
A daily limit of 2,400 tweets a day was put in place at Twitter to reduce strain on its operations, according to US media.
People also reported that TweetDeck, the popular dashboard for managing and viewing Twitter accounts, had stopped working.
