As Twitter tests new 280-character tweets, two Germans exploited a loophole in the popular social network site and sent a massive 35,000-character tweet, breaking the existing limit.

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Timrasett along with another user going by name HackneyYT broke Twitter's character limit with a message that begins "People! @Timrasett and @HackneyYT can exceed the character limit! You do not believe us? Here s about 35k characters proof."

After that, thousands of characters of seeming nonsense appear, tech website Gizmodo reported.

At least part of the trick was that the nonsense was formatted as a URL.

It is not yet clear how this method got past Twitter s automatic link shortening tools, but the tweet was treated just the same as if it were sending out a standard, reasonably-sized URL.

Both users were briefly suspended and the tweet was deleted.

A spokesperson for Twitter confirmed that the company has made changes to prevent this from happening again.

Twitter recently announced a test project allowing tweets to be expanded to 280 characters double the existing limit.

San Francisco-based Twitter said the new system, a major shift for the messaging platform known for its 140-character tweets, aims to address a major cause of frustration for many users.

A small group of users will see the new limits before Twitter decides on rolling out the changes more broadly.

Currently, the 280-character tweet facility is available to a small group of its 328 million users but the changes would soon be available for all users.

 

(This article has not been edited by Zeebiz editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)