Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has announced his shock resignation from the company on the same day that significant changes were announced to the social network’s Direct Messaging service.
Costolo has come in for significant criticism from shareholders dissatisfied with the growth of the company. Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) announced his resignation in a filing with the SEC today, according to Matt Rosoff of Business Insider. According to the filing, Costolo will vacate the position on July 1, to be replaced by interim CEO Jack Dorsey, who is currently CEO of Square.
Pressure has been mounting on Costolo after he struggled for years to boost growth at the company, but he will continue working on the board of directors.
Twitter’s Direct Messages character limit to be lifted
Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) users have long wondered why the site’s 140 character limit also applies to Direct Messages sent between two specific users. Now it appears that the social network has seen sense and decided to remove the limit for Direct Messages. In a post on its developer forum, Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) announced that Direct Messages will soon be able to contain more than 140 characters.
The reason that the announcement went out on the forum is to allow developers to prepare their APIs to accept the longer messages, should their applications have a Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) Direct Message functionality.
Further details to be released in a few weeks
According to the post, the changes will be implemented at some point over the course of July. Users will no longer have to write a series of shorter messages when communicating in private.
The post claims that further details about the change, including a more specific launch date, will be released on the forum in the next few weeks. There will be no changes made to the length of public tweets, which will still be limited to 140 characters.
Developers can contact Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) about the changes on the REST API forum3, or send a tweet to the handle @TwitterDev5.
