On Tuesday, Twitter formally announced that @-replies and media attachments (you know, those GIFs that the kids are crazy about these days) will no longer count against the 140-character limit.

The move comes as Twitter’s efforts to increase its user base and engagement have dipped, raising questions about its growth trend.

Twitter product manager Todd Sherman said in a statement, “Over the past decade, the tweet has evolved from a simple 140-character text message to a rich canvas for creative expression featuring photos, videos, hashtags, Vines and more.”
“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.”
The San Francisco company also announced that users will soon be able to retweet and quote their own tweets. However links aside from those to other tweets will still count against the character limit.

“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,” said Todd.

He added that the updates “will be available over the coming months.”