Twitter usernames will no longer count against the 140-character limit in replies, the company said today, following months of testing in which users complained that the redesign was confusing. Expect them to complain about this design, too: if more than one person is mentioned in your reply, Twitter hides their name unless you mouse over a link, making replies harder to browse.
The goal of the redesign is to “let you express more with 140 characters,” Twitter said in a blog post. The move follows a change last year that excluded media attachments including photos, GIFs, and polls from being included in the character count.
Now when you reply to a tweet, the name of the person you’re replying to will appear above the tweet. If more than one person is part of the thread, you’ll see one username followed by “and 1 other,” “and 2 others,” and so on. “When reading a conversation, you’ll actually see what people are saying, rather than seeing lots of @usernames at the start of a tweet,” Twitter said.
Of course, seeing usernames often provides important context about the nature of the conversation. Burying it under a click seems as likely to confuse as it does to streamline the process, at least to me — and to Recode editor Dan Frommer, who spotted the new design Wednesday in the Twitter for Mac app: