section_path: Appearance and features/Tweets
section_name: Tweets
paragraph_text: Tweets
  
  Tweets were publicly visible by default, but senders can restrict message delivery to their followers. Users can mute users they do not wish to interact with, block accounts from viewing their posts, and remove accounts from their followers list. Users can post via the Twitter website, compatible external applications, or by Short Message Service (SMS). Users may subscribe to other users' posts—this is known as "following" and subscribers are known as "followers" or "tweeps", a portmanteau of Twitter and peeps. Posts can be forwarded by other users to their own feed, a process known as a " retweet ". In 2015, Twitter launched "quote tweet", a feature which allows users to add a comment to their post, imbedding one post in the other. Users can also " like " individual tweets.
  
  The counters for likes, retweets, and replies appear next to the respective buttons in timelines such as on profile pages and search results. Counters for likes and reposts exist on a post's standalone page too. Since 2020, quote tweets have their own counter. Until the legacy desktop front end that was discontinued in 2020, a row with miniature profile pictures of up to ten liking or retweeting users was displayed, as well as a tweet reply counter next to the according button on a tweet's page.
  
  Twitter allows users to update their profile via their phones either by text messaging or by apps. Twitter announced in a tweet in 2022, that the ability to edit a tweet was being tested for select users. Eventually, all Twitter Blue subscribers would be able to use the feature. Users can group posts together by topic or type by use of hashtags – words or phrases prefixed with a " # " sign. Similarly, the " @ " sign followed by a username is used for mentioning or replying to other users. In 2014, Twitter introduced hashflags, special hashtags that automatically generate a custom emoji next to them for a period of time. Hashflags may be generated by Twitter themselves or purchased by corporations. To repost a message from another user and share it with one's own followers, a user can click the repost button within the post. Users can reply to other accounts' replies. Users can hide replies to their messages and select who can reply to each of their tweets before sending them: anyone, accounts who follow the post's author, specific accounts, or none.
  
  The original, strict 140 character limit was gradually relaxed. In 2016, Twitter announced that attachments, links, and media such as photos, videos, and the person's handle, would no longer count. In 2017, Twitter handles were similarly excluded and Twitter doubled its character limitation to 280. Under the new limit, glyphs are counted as a variable number of characters, depending upon the script they are from. From 2023 Twitter Blue users could create posts with up to 4,000 characters in length.
  
  t.co is a URL shortening service created by Twitter. It is only available for links posted to Twitter and not general use. All links posted to Twitter use a t.co wrapper. Twitter intended the service to protect users from malicious sites, and to use it to track clicks on links within tweets.
  
  In June 2011, Twitter announced its own integrated photo-sharing service that enables users to upload a photo and attach it to a Tweet right from Twitter.com. Users now have the ability to add pictures to Twitter's search by adding hashtags to the tweet. Twitter plans to provide photo galleries designed to gather and syndicate all photos that a user has uploaded on Twitter and third-party services such as TwitPic. In 2016 Twitter introduced the ability to add a caption of up to 480 characters to each image attached to a tweet, accessible via screen reading software or by hovering the mouse above a picture inside TweetDeck. In 2022, Twitter made the ability to add and view captions globally available. Descriptions can be added to any uploaded image with a limit of 1000 characters. Images that have a description will feature a badge that says ALT in the bottom left corner, which will bring up the description when clicked.
  
  In 2015, Twitter began to roll out the ability to attach poll questions to tweets. Polls are open for up to 7 days, and voters are not identified. In Twitter's early years, users could communicate with Twitter using SMS. Twitter discontinued this in most countries in 2023, after hackers exposed vulnerabilities.