NEW YORK -- Twitter (TWTR.N) has found more creative ways to ease its 140-character limit without officially raising it.

Now, the company says that when you reply to someone -- or to a group -- usernames will no longer count toward those 140 characters. This will be especially helpful with group conversations, where replying to two, three or more users at a time could be especially difficult with the character constraints.

Last fall, Twitter said it would stop counting photos, videos, quote tweets, polls and GIF animations toward the character limit.

Twitter, which has been struggling to attract new users, has been trying to appeal to both proponents and opponents by sticking to the current limit while allowing more freedom to express thoughts, or rants, through images and other media.