Twitter to Stop Counting Photos and Links in 140-Character Limit

Sarah Frier:

Twitter Inc. is making a major shift in how it counts characters in Tweets, giving users more freedom to compose longer messages.
The social media company will soon stop counting photos and links as part of its 140-character limit for messages, according to a person familiar with the matter. The change could happen in the next two weeks, said the person who asked not to be named because the decision isn’t yet public. Links currently take up 23 characters, even after Twitter automatically shortens them. The company declined to comment.

Twitter is so slow to innovate, and there are so many small things they could do to improve everyone’s time spent on there.

If the above comes to pass, only one question remains: will it also be included in the API for third-party clients?