Here’s the tweet that’s got Twitter fans doing the happy dance: “Say more about what's happening! Rolling out now: photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and Quote Tweets no longer count toward your 140 characters.”

Twitter first announced plans to change the way the platform counts characters in May 2016. In a blog post, Todd Sherman, senior product manager at Twitter, wrote; “So, you can already do a lot in a Tweet, but we want you to be able to do even more. In the coming months we’ll make changes to simplify Tweets including what counts toward your 140 characters, so for instance, @names in replies and media attachments (like photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) will no longer “use up” valuable characters.”

The day has finally come and users have responded well, with Twitter’s tweet announcing the changes receiving about 18 000 retweets and roughly 18 000 Likes at the time of publication. 

At the moment, @names are still counted as characters. CNNMoney reports that Twitter has confirmed it will “be updating its change to include @names soon”.

Other features the company discussed in May is that new tweets that begin with a username will reach all followers. This means the use of a full stop before an @name will no longer be necessary when this change is eventually rolled out.