Really Big Twitter News ⇥ twittercommunity.com

Twitter’s Sachin Agarwal:

We’ve done a lot to improve Direct Messages over the past year and have much more exciting work on the horizon. One change coming in July that we want to make you aware of now (and first!) is the removal of the 140 character limit in Direct Messages. In order to make this change as seamless as possible for you we’ve included some recommendations below to ensure all your applications and services can handle these longer format messages before we flip the switch.

According to Jordan Novet at Venture Beat, this isn’t a removal of the character limit so much as increasing it to 10,000 characters. Still, that’s pretty big news. After all, you’ve replaced email in your office with Slack, right? Why not replace Slack now? Isn’t it getting old?

Oh yeah, and they also whipped their Dick out:¹

Twitter, Inc. today announced that Dick Costolo has decided to step down as Chief Executive Officer of Twitter, effective July 1, 2015. Twitter’s Board of Directors has named Jack Dorsey, Co-­Founder and Chairman of the Board, to serve as Interim CEO while the Board conducts a search for Twitter’s next CEO. Costolo will continue to serve on Twitter’s Board of Directors, and Dorsey will continue to serve as CEO of Square, Inc., the payments and financial services company he co-­founded in 2009.

Costolo’s lead has made Twitter into a hulking developer- and user-unfriendly version of its former self. Meanwhile, Dorsey is mow heading both Square, which looked like it was getting a little shaky, and the now-public Twitter. The stock is up after-hours, though.