Twitter Checks New Tags to Point out Engagement from Tweet Writer in Replies

You would possibly suppose that with the Elon Musk takeover of Twitter pending, that it’s presently in a state of pause because it awaits information on what comes subsequent.

You’ll be unsuitable.

As evidenced by present CEO Parag Agrawal’s recent management reshuffle, Twitter remains to be pushing forward, even with main modifications seemingly on the way in which within the Elon period.

It’s nonetheless experimenting with new options too, with the most recent replace in testing being new tweet labels that might be added to tweets to supply extra context round sure engagements.

As you possibly can see on this instance (within the backside reply), shared by TechCrunch, Twitter’s engaged on a brand new, in-stream label that might signify when a tweet creator has appreciated a reply.

In an analogous take a look at, Twitter’s additionally now highlighting some tweet author replies, with an alternate textual content shade and a microphone icon subsequent to the remark.

Which Twitter’s been engaged on, in various kind, since 2018. Possibly it was a pet challenge of Agrawal in his earlier function as CTO on the app.

The thought is that this can immediate extra engagement by alerting customers to feedback that the creator has discovered most related, whereas additionally giving followers extra recognition in remark streams.

Recognition is a giant factor of the social media expertise for followers, and by higher highlighting such interplay, that would develop into a group constructing instrument, which could even immediate extra well-known individuals to work together within the replies extra usually.

As a result of everyone knows that well-known individuals aren’t utilizing the app. That’s what Elon Musk informed us a couple of weeks in the past, amongst his numerous criticisms of the app of issues that he’ll be seeking to repair.

Since then, Musk has floated numerous obscure options, together with making people pay for embedding tweets by high profile users. Which appears completely unworkable, whereas additionally overvaluing tweets, from anybody – however nonetheless, it’s one of many areas that Musk has in his sights for his grand Twitter revival plan.

Exterior of that use case, nonetheless, I’m unsure this characteristic would add rather a lot, with the extra signifier unlikely to play a giant function in… effectively, something.

However any additional engagement is a constructive, and with Twitter’s present tasks, as Agrawal just lately famous, failing to ‘hit intermediate milestones that enable confidence’ in reaching its growth goals, it must hold throwing issues on the wall, within the hopes that, cumulatively, they supply some profit.

One other, related tagging challenge on this entrance is its ‘vibes’ status update experiment, which might see a customized standing indicator hooked up to your tweets.

That additionally provides extra context to the tweet expertise, and it might turn out to be useful for these attending occasions, particularly, with attendees, at current, usually placing occasion hashtags on the top of their username to alert individuals to their participation.

I imply, that hasn’t been a giant concern over the past couple of years, with just about each occasion canceled, however that seems to be the first use case, with all of those parts serving to to supply extra engagement prompts inside completely different facets of the app.

Once more, they don’t seem to be they’ll shift the needle a lot on engagement, however perhaps, altogether, they’ll – and if Twitter’s engaged on them now, it’d as effectively push them out, earlier than Elon steps in and modifications everybody’s focus onto incorporating extra memes, or including ‘4/20’ references into the back-end code, or eliminating algorithms altogether, to enhance… one thing.

Primarily, the whole lot is in flux at Twitter proper now, however that may nonetheless see it push out a couple of extra tweaks and experiments earlier than its subsequent stage.