After over a decade of forcing users to get creative within its strict 140-character parameters, Twitter's now-ingrained length limit is getting ever-so-slightly more lenient. On Tuesday, the social network announced that media attachments such as photos and GIFs will no longer count toward the character limit, a game-changer that allows users to incorporate more multimedia into individual tweets without sacrificing precious room for text.
User handles, which are designated by an "@" symbol, will also be exempt from the character count, and tweets beginning with a handle will no longer vanish from users' timelines as they currently do. This relieves the Twitterverse of an odd makeshift trick wherein users place a period before the @ sign in order to make a tweet appear on their main timeline:
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