Should You Change Your Twitter Password?

On Friday, Twitter released a statement “[revealing] that it made a monumental security blunder by exposing the passwords of users in plain text.” It is not yet clear how many users were affected or how the error occurred but nonetheless, changing your password won’t hurt.

In addition to creating a new password, it is also a good idea to enable the two-factor identification feature. Once enabled, Twitter will send a verification code whenever a new device is attempting to access your account. Two-factor identification also allows you to use a third-party app to generate a password for you.

Lastly, it is a good idea to get a backup-code for your Twitter account in the event you lose your device. All of these features can be accessed by clicking on your profile image and then settings and privacy—which will lead you to a screen where changing your password and security features is a breeze.

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Twitter changes character limit to 280!

The first sentence of this article about Twitter was written in 140 characters, so we can show what has long been the top length of a tweet.

Ever since Twitter’s genesis in 2006, it has famously put a restriction on tweets longer than 140 characters.  In other words, there was a hard cap at 140 characters.  If one wanted had more to say than that, then they had to publish multiple tweets.  That is, until today.

Twitter said in a statement that they believe this change will encourage people to tweet more, perhaps because of the ability to express more information.  They too said that in a trial run, the expanded limit led to an increase in “likes, retweets, and engagement” as well as the users feeling “more satisfied” with how they were able to express themselves (nytimes.com).  The company also reported, however, that in the trial run only 5% of tweets exceeded the 140 limit.  Nevertheless, it seems that the increase has allowed its users an easier platform to get their point across without having to send multiple tweets.

Twitter’s subtle yet long-desired update will prove to be monumental.  Not only will users be able to fully express their opinions, but too engage with one-another like never before.  An increase in engagement will ultimately lead to more users and activity on the social media platform, which then poses bigger threats to its competitors like Facebook and Reddit.