Twitter says now we can all use 280 characters

After a trial run, Twitter is officially doubling its signature 140-character limit. Meanwhile, larger issues remain.

When you think about Twitter, a few issues pop up: nonstop harassment, Russian propaganda and a president threatening potential nuclear war.

So why is the company focused on doubling its character count for tweets to 280 characters from its original 140?

That's the question the company is likely to encounter -- despite some possible fanfare -- after announcing Tuesday it is officially doubling its signature 140-character limit for all users following a "successful" trial run in September with select users.

Here's an example of a 140-character tweet (left) and a 280-character tweet (right) as they appear in a Twitter timeline.

Twitter

"We are making this change after listening and observing a problem our global community was having (it wasn't easy enough to Tweet!), studying data to understand how we could improve, trying it out, and listening to your feedback," Twitter product manager Aliza Rosen wrote in a blog post. 

Most people should automatically see the 280-character feature. If not, they can update their mobile app or refresh twitter.com on their computers. People tweeting in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese will remain at the 140 character limit for now.

The move comes at an awkward time for Twitter, which has been facing criticism and pressure from shareholders, Congress, President Donald Trump and everyday people who use it. Among the most-discussed complaints have been concerns that the company negligently mishandled the daily harassment some people experience on its service and that it allowed propaganda on the platform that illegally influenced the 2016 presidential election.

It's probably no surprise that the company's user count has stalled at 330 million accounts, and that's after Twitter admitted to having overcounted user numbers for three years.

Concerns about Russian interference in the US election led congressional leaders to grill Facebook, Google and Twitter on the details of how that meddling happened and what the tech giants are doing to stop it. Fearing federal regulation, the companies have vowed to make changes.