Twitter finally announced that it has removed the 140-character limit on Twitter Direct Messages. Great move, but is it too late to entice users who already use other private chat apps to switch to Twitter?

Direct Messages now go beyond 140 characters. Go long, express yourself, wax poetic: https://t.co/zr2lnTfOI7 pic.twitter.com/o4eSv6Wv5u

— Twitter (@Twitter) August 12, 2015

Last year I wondered if Twitter could become a strong contender for a primary messaging app but I doubt that could happen. Just look at user numbers for services like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger that Facebook announced recently:

Twitter becoming a popular chat/messaging option along with being an essential news and updates service has a certain appeal from the perspective of being able to simplify your choice of apps to do it all but with Twitter having only recently exceeded 300 million monthly active users in total, I think the winner remains Facebook with its massively popular private messaging options which never had Twitter’s 140-character limit.