Twitter Announce A Shake Up

Here are the basics.

• When replying to a Tweet the @handle will no longer count towards the character limit. Though the @handle mentions in the middle of your Tweets still count towards the character limit.
  
• Attachments (photos/GIFs/videos/polls/Quote Tweets) will no longer count as characters.
  
• New options to Retweet and Quote Tweet your own Tweets.
  
• Death to the .@handle convention, new Tweets that start with a @handle will reach all followers but replies will need to be Retweeted to ensure they reach everyone.

Twitter say these changes are happening over the coming months. This could be anywhere from a few days to the rest of the year, so wait and see. I expect it'll be sooner rather than later.

No word on links so you can safely assume all links still count towards the character limit.

They do say they are looking at more changes to Tweets but they give no indication what this might entail.

What does this mean for the construction industry on social media?

Well, it's pretty clear that basically everything visual is still enjoying strong support from Twitter. Time to stock up on high-quality images, shoot great video and up your GIF game.

As always talking to people is a big part of social media and Twitter is making it crystal clear that they want to make it even easier for users to have conversations.

To sum up, this announcement boils down to; less broadcasting, more sharing of visual content and firm signals that social media is fundamentally for being social. So get out there be visual and start some conversations.