They say its because they want people in languages like English and Spanish to be able to 'express themselves more', because in languages like Chinese and Japanese you can day more in one character than say European languages. I know to most people this might seem like a brilliant idea, but I think in the long run it may not be such a good feature. But I'm not a very big Twitter user, so I might be wrong. http://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/companies/twitter-trials-280-character-tweet-limit/ar-AAsvbK7?OCID=ansmsnnews11