Weibo Drops 140-Character Rule Before Twitter

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Sina Weibo, the Chinese micro-blogging service with 200 million users, is dropping its character restraints. Until now, the platform looked a lot like Twitter, down to its 140-character limit per post. Beginning this month, however, Weibo will lose its max character rule, allowing for longer posts.

According to some reports, the limit could be pushed to 2,000 characters. However, in a letter addressing the coming change, Sina Weibo CEO Wang Gaofei said that the platform would be sticking to its micro-blogging roots. Instead of opening up the feed to longer posts, anything over the 140-character parameters will need to be clicked in order to be read.

Weibo's move comes as Twitter assesses its own character limit (see Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's tweet below) and could serve as an example of what's to come for its American counterpart.