How to Truncate Your Twitter Post

Microblogging on Twitter allows you to share your thoughts and feelings in 140 characters or fewer, an amount initially established because it was slightly lower than the number of characters allowed in a text message. Text messaging has changed, but even with so many apps, Twitter has not. You can shorten your tweets by shortening links, using text speak or posting videos or photos with your message. You can also use a service that posts longer tweets for you.

Shortening Links

No matter what link you post on Twitter, when you post through the Twitter website or a text message, Twitter automatically uses its T.co service to make it into a 20 character link. Twitter does this whether the original link is 100 characters or 15. If you want to use a different link shortening service, some Twitter apps have other shortening services built in, or allow you to select which one you want to use. If you are using a Twitter app, you can also use website-based services like Goo.gl, Po.st or Bit.ly to shorten your link first, then copy it into your Twitter app.

Truncating Text

Purists find text-speak irritating, but it can be a huge space saver in your Tweets. If you do not already have a thorough knowledge of text-speak, Time Magazine, Netlingo and the CSG Network have compiled lists to help get you started. Using text-speak may also give you enough room to add hashtags to your posts, so other Twitter users can search for those terms and see your posts that include them, even if they do not follow you.

Images and Videos

As with linking to articles or blog posts, linking to videos only shows the link to the video in the post, using whatever link shortener you use to display it. Twitter allows you to upload images directly to the website and displays those along with the related post. Photos uploaded directly to Twitter do not take up any character spaces, but photos uploaded to a third party provider, like Twitr Pix, Yfrog or Twitpic, post links to the pictures and do take up characters.

Longer Tweets

For posts that cannot be shortened to 140 characters, no matter what measures you employ, other options like TwitLonger, TweetExtend or TwitPlus allow longer tweets. These services send the first 140 characters of your tweet to Twitter along with a short link to read the rest. Some Twitter apps automatically employ these or other services to allow you to send longer tweets; read all app descriptions before installing them, so you know whether your app supports longer tweets.