Twitter says it will simplify Tweets in the coming months. Media attachments, such as photos and videos, will no longer count toward the character limit; @names in reply to Tweets will be removed from the count; and people will now be able to Retweet and Quote Tweet themselves. In addition, any new Tweet beginning with an @name will be seen by all followers.

Jack Dorsey (CEO, Twitter): One of the biggest priorities for this year is to refine our product and make it simpler. We’re focused on making Twitter a whole lot easier and faster.

“We’re not giving up on the idea of Twitter being in the moment. That concept of brevity, speed and live conversation – being able to think of something and put it out to the world instantly – that’s what’s most important,” added Mr. Dorsey.

Earlier this year, Twitter announced changes to its timeline. The reaction to the enhanced timeline has been positive with less than two percent of people opting out, and has increased engagement from people on Twitter with significantly more Tweets, Retweets, Replies and Likes, says the company.

Additionally, changes were made this year to the process of signing up new people on Twitter, helping them find new accounts by topic, location and people. The on-boarding flow has resulted in increases in Follows, up 48 percent, and Mutual Follows, up 56 percent, on average across both iOS and Android OS, says Twitter.

Launched solely as text, Tweets have evolved in the past 10 years to include photos, videos, GIFs, polls and Quote Tweets – all of which have historically subtracted from the overall 140-character count.

Fabric, comprised of Crashlytics, Answers, Digits, MoPub and Twitter software development kits, is now running on over two billion mobile devices using Fabric-enabled apps every month.