Dear Twitter,

There are obvious reasons why mentions and links are included in the character count of a tweet. If they weren’t, Twitter would become a spammer’s playground by letting them send links to every user. I get that. However, I would love to be able to engage in multi-person conversations without having to keep my tweets to 20 characters (or whatever they have to be) in order to make sure everyone sees it. Here’s what I would love to see from Twitter in the future:

1. 160 character tweets. I love and am all for the short nature of a tweet. I think it’s one of the best things about Twitter and there’s no denying that it’s what makes Twitter unique. I would just like to be able to send out tweets the same length as a text message. It’s not a huge increase in characters but would be a dream-come-true for most users.
2. Three mentions excluded from the character count. This will improve group discussions on Twitter by letting users send meaningful tweets while ensuring that they can still include intended recipients. I know that an unlimited number of mentions is not feasible but a few would be nice.
3. One link excluded from the character count. It would be awesome to share a link and fit in a detailed description. While this is the least important of the three (at least for me), it would still be a nice feature to improve the experience.

Just my $0.02 and hopes for Twitter in the future.