Images, videos and gifs no longer contribute towards the 140-character limit on Twitter, the social media platform has confirmed.

From this week, people using Twitter who want to add media to their tweets will not have to sacrifice some of their available characters to do so. Previously, a significant portion of the limit could have been taken up by embedding media.

The move also affects polls and Quote Tweets, and comes around four months after Twitter first announced the move.

However, @names, which Twitter had originally said would also be exempt from the 140-character limit, have not been included in the change. The social media platform has not commented on whether it will roll out this change in another update.

The move follows Twitter's co-founder Jack Dorsey's appearance at the DMEXCO conference in Germany, where he said that simplifying the user experience is one of Twitter's key priorities at present.