Twitter Outlines Roll-Out Plan for Alternative Feeds, Updated Bookmarks UI and Long-Form Tweets

A fast Twitter 2.0 replace: Over the weekend, Twitter chief Elon Musk confirmed that Twitter might be bringing again its side-swipe option to modify between the algorithmic and chronological timeline later this week, with its update to the bookmarks UI to return subsequent week.

Twitter has already shared examples of how each of those updates will look, with the previous truly already being released early last year, earlier than Twitter rolled it again as a result of it aggravated folks a lot.

Twitter engineer Andrea Conway shared this picture of the up to date bookmark button final week, which is able to get extra outstanding placement on the tweet element display screen.

Musk believes that extra folks will have interaction with extra tweets in the event that they’re conscious of the bookmark performance, which he says has been hidden by some ‘obscure UI’, whereas he’s additionally floated the thought of including bookmarks in a tweet’s like count – although I’m not precisely positive that persons are utilizing bookmarks as a Like different.

Along with these updates, Musk says that long-form tweets will even be coming in February. That, at the least at this stage, will nonetheless see tweets displayed of their common dimension and format in-stream, with a ‘Present extra’ immediate on the finish.

That’ll present an alternative choice to lengthy tweet threads, and Musk is hoping that the capability to share longer updates will get extra creators posting extra content material to the app, as a substitute of linking folks off to different host websites.

Although I believe the UI right here might change.

I doubt many individuals will even discover the ‘present extra’ immediate, which can immediate Musk and Co. to make it extra outstanding as a way to increase consciousness. We’ll have to attend and see on launch.

Lastly, Musk has additionally introduced that new text formatting options will even quickly be built-in into the Twitter UI, which is able to allow customers so as to add daring textual content, underline and italics, together with a collection of font dimension choices.

That might facilitate new methods to have interaction by way of tweet, with completely different emphases including one other factor to your brief missives.

There are literally methods in which you’ll make the most of these capabilities in tweets proper now, as Twitter supports Unicode functionality, however a extra native integration of those instruments may see them extra broadly utilized, including one other factor to the tweet expertise.

From a model use perspective, the influence of every of those updates must be pretty minimal.

Aspect-swiping timelines weren’t common when Twitter first tried them, so it’s onerous to see them being rather more related now – but when they do see extra use, that would probably scale back your tweet publicity, as a result of Twitter’s algorithm would not be capable of present your tweets to as many customers in the primary feed.

Bookmarks could possibly be a component to look at if Twitter makes an even bigger transfer into buying and product listings, with customers ready to make use of bookmarks as a method to flag gadgets of curiosity, whereas it’s too early to say whether or not lengthy type tweets might be of relevance within the tweet stream (and actually, you most likely wish to drive extra folks to your personal web site anyway).

Check formatting choices will add one other consideration to your tweet course of, and it may spark some fascinating new utilization traits, if/when it rolls out.

However there’s nothing revolutionary as but, there’s no large shift coming, aside from Twitter probably forcing brands to pay for a gold tick, or lose their authentication standing, at some future stage.

That might be an necessary consideration for manufacturers, although so much might also rely upon total Twitter Blue take up, and whether or not Twitter decides to stay with its new, paid verification program, or scale it again, if it doesn’t see important adoption.

Possibly we’ll get some indication on that quickly, as you’ll assume that Twitter would know by now what degree of curiosity there may be in paying for checkmarks within the app.

Both means, Twitter 2.0, at current, stays extra like Twitter 1.5, with minor tweaks which can be unlikely to have a huge impact.

However Musk has additionally flagged an even bigger UI refresh on the horizon. Twitter’s Q1 numbers will possible drive when, precisely, it makes an even bigger push.