Prankster duo post 35,000-character tweet

As Twitter tests 280-character tweets -- doubling the previous 140-character limit - two German users have successfully broke the existing character limit by sending a massive 35,000-character tweet.

According to an Engadget report, the duo formatted a gibberish message as a URL and posted it on Twitter.

User Timrasett worked with another user going by the name of HackneyYT to break Twitter's character limit with a message: "People! @Timrasett and @HackneyYT can exceed the character limit! You do not believe us? Here's about 35k characters proof."

Twitter temporarily banned the two users, though their accounts were back after some time.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that the exploit has been fixed.

Currently, the 280-character tweet facility is available to a small group of its 328 million users but it would soon be rolled out globally, Twitter has said in a blog post.

According to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, this is a small change, but a big move for them.

"The 140 limit was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence!" Dorsey had tweeted.

Last year, there were reports that the micro-blogging site may go for 10,000-character tweets.

But Dorsey denied those reports, saying the 140-character limit is "a beautiful constraint" and that Twitter "will never lose that feeling".

The 140-character limit has been around as long as Twitter has been and has become part of the product's personality.

--IANS

na/in