September 19, 2016 - 22:58 AMT
Twitter removes character limit for photos, videos and quotes

Right on schedule, Twitter's long-anticipated announcement goes live today (September 19): photos, videos, GIFs, polls and quoted tweets will no longer count towards the 140-character limit. The company is also testing out some new changes to the way @-replies function on the service, Engadget reports.

While the feature is still rolling out to all users today, users might notice that when replying to a tweet, the @names at the beginning of will no longer affect the number of characters remaining. Replies will also be seen by all of your followers, not just the ones who follow both accounts, which means a death of the ".@" reply convention. (But it's still unclear for now whether you'll be able to keep adding on usernames until you eventually build a never-ending Twitter canoe.)

If you're tweeting through one of Twitter's official apps, the usernames you are replying to will appear in the heading of the your compose window instead of being listed in the body of your Tweet. So, if you're using an outdated app, Twitter says tweets might look a little weird or cut off for awhile. Finally, there's no word yet on that rumored feature allowing users to attach longer text blocks or, you know, more useful anti-troll tools, Engadget said.

Photo: Mary Turner/ Getty