Earlier this week, rumours circulated of Twitter’s plans to extend its trademark 140 character limit to a whopping 10,000 characters. Does this mean the end of Twitter as we know it?

The rumours were seemingly verified by Twitter founder and recently returned CEO Jack Dorsey, who tweeted an image of his thoughts by way of explanation that Twitter, like its users, is always susceptible to change. There is no doubt that the original 140 character constraints of an SMS message are no longer necessary in the smartphone age, but short messages increasingly supported by photos and video content are what separates Twitter from the likes of LinkedIn and Facebook.

Is this fundamental change likely to see the growth in active users that Dorsey seems so desperate to secure, or will it see committed patrons turn away and look towards Snapchat, Instagram or other micro-blogging platforms?

For now, the rumours are just that, but the move last month to increase the Direct Message limit to 10,000 characters – along with Dorsey’s comments – do suggest that some change may be imminent. So far, however, the response from users has been almost exclusively negative. Can Twitter afford to ignore it?

On 6 January 2016, I joined the Money Matters show on TRT World to discuss what all this means for Twitter. See the interview below: