What was Twitter’s original character limit for a standard post?

Twitter’s original character limit for a standard post was 140 characters.

The limit came from Twitter’s origins as an SMS-based service. Traditional SMS messages were commonly restricted to 160 characters, and Twitter reserved part of that space for a user’s name or identifier. This left 140 characters for the message itself.

The compact format became one of Twitter’s defining characteristics. Users developed conventions such as abbreviations, hashtags, shortened links, and retweets to communicate within the restriction. The limit also helped Twitter work effectively on basic mobile phones before smartphones became dominant.

Twitter doubled the limit to 280 characters in 2017 after testing showed that longer posts could improve expression without removing the platform’s concise style. The 140-character era remains closely associated with Twitter’s early identity, even though the service later changed substantially.