'I stopped reading halfway through:' Twitter is furious about the new longer tweets

Twitter announced on Tuesday it was testing one of the biggest changes to the service in its 11-year history.

Tweets had previously been limited to 140 characters. Many considered that Twitter's defining characteristic.

But now it's testing tweets that can be twice as long. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced the change in a tweet made up of exactly 280 letters, numbers, and symbols. 

But the real question is what Twitter's notoriously snarky userbase made up of tech nerds, politics journalists, sports fans, and Russian bots thinks. So far, it seems like they hate it.

Here are some tweets: 

 Some people are wondering how famous Twitter user President Donald Trump will take the news. 

VC Bill Gurley, who backed Twitter before it was a public company, likes the move, though.

So does The New York Times' Silicon Valley columnist:

Ultimately, the key audience for this change will be normal people who aren't addicted to Twitter. Some like it!

 

NOW WATCH: Everything we know about the Apple 'iPhone X' - which should be announced today