In an attempt to improve its Direct Messages feature, Twitter today announces that it will be removing its 140-character limit when sending private messages.
The company encourages users to take the following actions to make the update as seamless as possible:
- Review the new API additions below.
- Update your GET requests so you will be able to receive the full length of DM text.
- Adjust your app UI to accommodate longer DM text.
Although the update won’t take effect until Twitter launches it this July, they are recommending to test the above procedure in advance. Meanwhile, public tweets still remain to be limited to 140 characters.
API updates:
- REST API
DM read endpoints (GET direct_messages57, GET direct_messages/sent13 and GET direct_messages/show13)
Send “full_text=true” as a query parameter to receive long DM text. If this parameter is not provided, you will get a truncated version of the DM. There will be no structural changes to the response returned by these endpoints.
DM write endpoint (POST direct_messages/new8)
The “text” parameter will start accepting text longer than 140 characters. The new limit for DMs will be 10k characters. - Streaming API
User Streams (GET user20) and Site Streams (GET site6) will automatically start receiving DMs that have text longer than 140 characters. Unlike the REST API, no additional parameter is needed. There will be no structural changes to the objects returned by these endpoints.
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