With a post on the Twitter Developers forum yesterday, Product Manager for Direct Messages Sachin Agarwal has announced that Twitter will be removing the limit of 140 characters from DMs this summer:

We’ve done a lot to improve Direct Messages over the past year and have much more exciting work on the horizon. One change coming in July that we want to make you aware of now (and first!) is the removal of the 140 character limit in Direct Messages. In order to make this change as seamless as possible for you we’ve included some recommendations below to ensure all your applications and services can handle these longer format messages before we flip the switch.

When I first read this, I felt skeptical. Much of Twitter’s appeal to me lies in the streamlined approach to short messages that fly by in the timeline. But, some of my most important conversations over the years have started from Twitter DMs. From this standpoint, it’s surprising that Twitter hasn’t put more thought in the DM product as a messaging platform, alienating users who were looking for a direct, nimble communication system – and pushing them to other services.

The strength of Twitter DMs is, for me, the existing graph between users (people I’m interested in), speed, and the lack of baggage from email. Lately, I’ve come to like the ability to easily share links and pictures in DMs as well. I don’t know if raising the character limit to 10k characters will by itself improve DMs, but Twitter is wasting an opportunity with DMs, so maybe their new CEO could use this as a starting point.