Twitter to stop including user names, images and links in 140 characters

Since its inception, Twitter has always given numbers to everything within the text box in its 140 character limit. This shows that, as a user, if you were replying to someone their user names would take up part of your 140 characters. Similarly, if you added a URL or uploaded a picture, the link will also eat up part of the 140 characters.

However, this trend is going to change in the coming months, as the company has announced four changes that should allow users get the most out of the 140 characters.

- Usernames within a reply tweet will not be part of the 140 characters. Meaning even if a user is replying to one or multiple people, users don't have to worry about running out of characters for your tweet.

- Similarly shortened links in tweets also will not be part of the 140 character. Be it image or video link, polls or quoted tweets.

- A user can now retweet himself/herself, if that's something he/she wants to do.

- Users do not need to add a period before @ so he/she can tag someone and also have the tweet seen by your followers. Users will be able to start a tweet with someone's username and as long as it is not a reply, it will be visible to his/her followers. And if a user wants his/her followers to see a reply, he/she will be able to retweet it, as mentioned before in the 2nd hyphen.

The Company says it will be rolling out these changes over the coming months so developers have the time to incorporate them within their app.