Sarah Frier, reporting for Bloomberg:

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.

I’ve been very hesitant about Twitter making alterations to the 140-character limit. My biggest fear is that they’ll ruin what makes Twitter great — brevity. But this is a change I can get behind. Links take up about a sixth of the total character count and often feel too restricting when you’re trying to comment on the link or image you’re tweeting about.

I have two questions about the change, though. Will third-party client developers be able to get in on the action at launch? And, will there be measures in place to prevent spammers from filling their tweets with dozens of images or links?