The 140-character limit for tweets isn't going anywhere, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told NBC's Today show on Friday.
The company was rumored to be working on a "new product" last fall that would allow users to surpass the limit.
"It's staying," Dorsey said when NBC's Matt Lauer asked him about Twitter's plans to revisit the limit. "It's a good constraint for us, and it allows for of-the-moment brevity."
Last September, Re/code reported that Dorsey, who was then the company's interim CEO, was "apparently supportive of a potential change." But a lot has changed since then, including the fact that Dorsey was named the permanent CEO in October, removing his interim title.
That could mean he no longer feels pressure to shake things up immediately in advance of a new CEO's arrival. But Dorsey's stance on retaining the limit could also be a response to users' opinions.
As part of a gradual revamp of its direct messaging feature, Twitter expanded the DM limit to 10,000 characters last summer. Rival social media platform Facebook also increased its character limits from 5,000 to more than 60,000 a few years ago.
To get around the limit, some Twitter users attach screenshots of much larger messages, or break up whatever they want to say in a series of multiple tweets. But even Dorsey acknowledges those are imperfect solutions.
"Instead, what if that text...was actually text?" Dorsey tweeted in January, adding momentum to the rumor that the limit would disappear. "Text that could be searched. Text that could be highlighted. That's more utility and power."
The 140-character limit was originally conceived to facilitate tweets sent over SMS. While SMS tweets have all but disappeared among users in developed countries, the brevity they inspired has become one of Twitter's defining features.