Twitter may soon remove links and photos from 140-character limit

After years of deliberation, it appears that Twitter is finally going to stop counting links and photos toward its 140-character limit in tweets. A person familiar with the matter tells Bloomberg that although it hasn't been made public, the company has reached a decision, and the update could hit within the next two weeks.

Currently, a link takes up 23 characters in a tweet, even after Twitter truncates it. After the update, users won't be forced to abbreviate their thoughts (any further than Twitter already force them to) when sharing a link.

This isn't quite the bombshell that users were expecting when rumors began to spread that Twitter would eliminate the character limit altogether, giving users thousands or tens of thousands of characters to share longer statuses on the social network. But it is going to be a major boon for publishers who don't want to shorten their headlines just to fit them on Twitter while including a photo and a link.

Expect to hear an official announcement from Twitter in the coming days.