Say goodbye to Twitter's 140-character limit for Direct Messages

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Twitter is rolling out new changesImage source, Getty Images

You know the situation. You want to send your mate a Direct Message on Twitter, but you've got a lot to say for yourself and you run out of...

...characters. So you have to do it in two or three chunks - well not any more.

The social network's removing the 140-character limit on private messages to let users "express themselves" more freely.

The feature's being rolled out for DMs around the world.

Users have been tweeting about how they'll use the extra characters, external

Some say they'll use them for song lyrics, external

It's the first time the site's removed the limit on any of its features, but it says there's no plan to do the same for public posts.

Twitter's co-founder Jack Dorsey recently admitted the service wasn't doing enough to make the site better for users and attract new interest.

It's currently has 300 million global users, compared to Facebook's 1.4 billion.

Image source, Twitter

Sachin Agarwal, Twitter's product manager for DMs, hopes it'll make people more expressive on the site.

"I think in the past you might have felt constricted by 140 characters and so you had to cut out a word here or there, but now you end up with these longer messages where people are really able to get their point across and do it in a more funny way," he says.

"They can add more emojis, more photos, things like that, which just let them be a little more richer in their expression."

He says he wants it to feel like a more "casual chatting platform" to "compliment" the public side of the site.

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