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Twitter now permitting line breaks for web and mobile clients

It might seem like a small change, but the Twitterverse is making good use out of the new feature on the social network: line breaks.

Up until now, users had only one continuous line in which to share 140 characters. Now, if you use Twitter on the web, you can post a tweet with up to about 70 lines of text, according to TechCrunch.

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Sure, line breaks don’t sound nearly as exciting as some of the other developments on the horizon from Twitter, like its rumoured music discovery service after acquiring We Are Hunted, but for those creative types on Twitter, it’s a great way to transform those short messages into something pretty cool.

Twitter poets are going to get a kick out of it, for starters. Line breaks mean that your feed is likely to now be filled with an abundance of haikus.

There are still a few limitations with the service; for starters, when using the Twitter embed code, it doesn’t preserve the formatting (hence why these tweets are screengrabs). Second, you’re not going to be able to see the formatting if you use a Twitter client like TweetDeck or third-party apps; the only way to see it is to view it via twitter.com or through one of the Twitter mobile apps.

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It also has the possible problem of “uglifying” Twitter, as CNET fears. The unchecked ability to put gaps of space in your tweets could prove to be incredibly annoying if people get carried away with it.

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