Twitter will (finally) let you tweet things longer than 140 characters

Twitter is finally changing its iconic 140-character limit.

After months of internal debate, the company announced two updates on Tuesday that will allow users to tweet things longer than the current 140-character limit allows.

Twitter will no longer count media attachments toward the limit, including photos and videos. Media attachments like this currently take up 24 characters.

Usernames — or @handles — will also be excluded from the character count when you reply to another user, leaving you with 140 characters to say whatever's on your mind. Both of these updates were previously reported last week; Twitter is simply announcing them to the masses.

Leslie Berland, Twitter's newly appointed CMO, says the expanded character count is intended to let people be more "expressive." She even believes that it could increase how often people tweet.

"We expect people to tweet more, to have more vibrant conversations," Berland explained. "We expect people who are new to Twitter to be welcomed to a much more intuitive experience that makes sense for them and is easier for them to understand."

That would be great news for Twitter, of course, which has struggled to get new users onto the platform, and would certainly love people tweeting more often.

Twitter has been thinking about this change since last fall, and at one point considered a 10,000-character tweet limit, essentially doing away with the constraint altogether. Berland says the company is always looking for ways to change the product, but wouldn't say whether or not the limit may still evolve.

Don't expect longer tweets right away, though. The update will roll out to users over the coming months. Berland said Twitter is announcing it now so that more developers that partner with Twitter (e.g., customer service platforms for brands) can prepare accordingly.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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