Facebook Increases 5,000 Character Limit Status Update to 60,000

A few months ago in September, Facebook increased their status update feature to have a 5,000 character limit. Possibly in an effort to differentiate their status updates from something disposable and tweet-like, Facebook has now increased the character limit of status updates from 5,000 characters to a much larger 60,000 characters. The longer status updates appear in the Live Ticker like they previously have, but don’t worry, your Ticker won’t become much more spammy than it already is.

After a specific character limit is reached, which seems to be around 80 or so, the status updates appearing in the Live Ticker will truncate, preventing the inevitable 60,000 character spam that will come with this update. The News Feed, however, truncates the status updates at around 400 characters, so that will be the place to avoid, or depending on how much you like reading status updates, the place to spend the bulk of your Internet time.

If someone really wants the character limit on a status update to exceed 60,000, Facebook suggests simply writing a Note instead of a status update at 63,206 characters, a number chosen for an amusing reason. Facebook engineer Bob Baldwin:

I set the exact limit to something nerdy. Facebook … Face Boo K … hex(FACE) – K … 64206 – 1000 = 63206 :-)”.

The question this character limit increase will pose is whether Facebook users will use the new limit to be productive and post more thought-provoking updates, or if they’ll resort to abusing the new limit and spamming with longer-form inane chatter. My guess: A little from column A, a little from column B.

(All Facebook via Inside Facebook)

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James Plafke