【2001 Archives】

Twitter001 Archivesfinally embracing the tweetstorm.

In yet another admission that 140 characters (or 280 characters) just isn't enough for some people, today Twitter is introducing a feature that makes the so-called tweetstorm an official part of its service.

The new feature is rolling out now (though it may take a few weeks to get to everyone) and it allows users to compose a thread of multiple tweets almost as easily as a single tweet, with a new "+" menu that allows you to link more than one tweet at a time.

While tweetstorms have long been popular among power users, Twitter hasn't always made composing threads easy on its end, despite efforts to make it simpler over the years. Now, not only will Twitter allow you to create tweetstorms right from its app and website, it will make it much easier to view lengthy threads with four or more tweets via a new "show this thread" option that will "unfurl" linked tweets.

Twitter confirmed earlier this year that it was testing such a feature, though this is the first time it's been made available beyond beta testers.

As the company points out in a blog post, the update is meant to make threads more approachable to all of Twitter's users — not just the power users. But outside of that, embracing long threads and tweetstorms is just another sign that the company is increasingly looking for ways to help users move beyond its once rigid 140-character constraint.