As rumored, Twitter, today announced that in a bid to let its users express themselves more in 140 characters, the company is removing certain restrictions on this limit. In the coming months, Twitter will be simplifying some of the stuff that counts towards the 140-character limit.

This includes not counting any @name mentions or media attachment URLs in the 140-character limit. The company is also removing its hardly used “.@name” feature that was used to broadcast a tweet to a wider audience. The company is also allowing Twitter users to retweet or quote retweet their own tweets.

• Replies: When replying to a Tweet, @names will no longer count toward the 140-character count. This will make having conversations on Twitter easier and more straightforward, no more penny-pinching your words to ensure they reach the whole group.

• Media attachments: When you add attachments like photos, GIFs, videos, polls, or Quote Tweets, that media will no longer count as characters within your Tweet. More room for words!

• Retweet and Quote Tweet yourself: We’ll be enabling the Retweet button on your own Tweets, so you can easily Retweet or Quote Tweet yourself when you want to share a new reflection or feel like a really good one went unnoticed.

• Goodbye, .@: These changes will help simplify the rules around Tweets that start with a username. New Tweets that begin with a username will reach all your followers. (That means you’ll no longer have to use the ”.@” convention, which people currently use to broadcast Tweets broadly.) If you want a reply to be seen by all your followers, you will be able to Retweet it to signal that you intend for it to be viewed more broadly.

Twitter will be rolling out these changes over the coming months, but it has already started notifying developers about it from today. This way, when the changes are finally rolled out, everything will work as expected.

Rumors had initially pointed out that Twitter will be completely removing its 140-character limit. In comparison, the change announced by the company today makes more sense. What do you think about this change from Twitter?