Twitter made a huge change last year, increasing its character count from 140 to 280. The update was seen as a significant improvement for the platform, and was expected to influence how people tweet. But did it? Current trends in Twitter usage might surprise you.

Tweets are Not Longer

The obvious expectation with the new character limit is that people would put that extra space to good use and be more verbose in their remarks. In fact, the opposite is true. Not only have tweets not grown in size, they are actually a little shorter (on average).

Even with the longer limit, the average tweet is only 33 characters long, down from the 34 character average a year ago when the limit was 140. Some people are using up all their characters, but not that many. Of all English language tweets, only 1% actually hit 280. The extra characters may be an under utilized opportunity for you to differentiate your small business from other Social Media Marketers.

Are Tweets More Polite?

Though abusive behavior is an ongoing problem with Twitter content, there is actually an uptick in the use of "please" and "thank you". To be precise, there has been a 54% increase in tweets with "please" and "thank you" is being used about 22% more often too. Make certain that your Tweets, and all of your Social Media communications, correctly reflect the personality of your business.

Abbreviations Are Out

The era of creative abbreviations to reduce character counts is over. The use of popular short forms like "gr8", "sry" and "b4" have dropped in the past year since the character limit increase. Statistics show that they have gone down by 36, 5 and 13 percent respectively. The actual words themselves (spelled out properly) have all gone up instead. Keeping up with the current Twitter lingo can help your business communications appear current and well styled.

More Twitter Conversations

Another interesting twist in Twitter use is the increase in replies. There are no specific numbers on this but the trend can mean that conversations and engagement is building. Instead of people, and brands, making one-way statements to their followers, there is more back-and-forth which can be a good sign for anyone trying to get people more involved in their message.

More Twitter Questions

To continue the theme of user engagement, there is also a sizable increase in the number of questions being asked. Technically, it's just an increase in the use of the question mark, and it could even mean that people are adding additional punctuation to questions for emphasis. Experts are interpreting it to mean there are likely more questions being asked though. Thirty percent more, in fact. Using Twitter as a customer support forum may enhance your ability to assist your clients with questions and concerns.

Overall, the increase in characters on Twitter hasn't really had much impact on tweet length though there are clearly other trends that are worth noting, especially if you are using Twitter as a platform in your overall marketing or social media plans.

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