Have they announced new methods to tackle online hate, have they finally introduced the ability to Edit Tweets? Nope, Twitter today announced that the very thing which brought its users to the service, the 140 Character limit, is to be expanded, and not slightly, double!

That’s right, Twitter is already allowing select users to post a 280 Character Tweet, a move away from the previous more concise Tweets previously possible on the service. We’re not sure how we feel about this, as, let’s be fair, the 140 Character limit allowed for more shortened and compact versions of News / Updates to be seen at a quick glance, but give it a few month and we’ll be wondering how the heck we ever lived on 140.

Can I test the service for myself?

Well, this is the Internet, so naturally users have figured out ways to test the 280 Character version of Twitter already, using the following Chrome extension ‘Tampermonkey;

So, here’s how to tweet with 280 characters instead of 140:

• Download Tampermonkey for your browser of choice (Chrome webstore link)
• Visit this this Github repository, click the “raw” button, then tell tampermonkey to “install” the script (or copy and paste the code into a new script in Tampermonkey)
• Now visit twitter.com, make sure the script in running in Tampermonkey, then tweet away at 280 Characters

It is worth noting that, should you not feel like tampering around with extensions that, Twitter is widely rolling out the service gradually for its users and should hit you and me, very shortly.