There are several new and upcoming Twitter features you need to know about. Twitter continuously innovates, introducing features to enhance user experience and engagement. Recent and upcoming features include improved algorithms for more relevant content, enhanced tweet analytics for better engagement insights, new ad formats for increased visibility, and advanced tools for combating misinformation. Features like voice tweets and increased character limits for select users are also being tested, aiming to diversify user interactions on the platform.
Data shows Twitter has 330 million monthly active users and 134 million daily active users. An estimated 63% of Twitter users worldwide fall between the ages of 35 and 65 years old making it appealing for brands with a more mature demographic compared to Instagram or SnapChat. In the US, the average adult Twitter user appears to fall closer to the lower end of that age range with a median age of 40.
For brands that have a target audience on Twitter, it makes sense to stay up-to-date with new and potentially upcoming features on the platform. It has been around since 2006, making it one of the oldest social media platforms online today. To keep up with the competition, they must continue to innovate and improve the platform. Much of what you see on this list aims to do just that.
Overview
Conversation Insights Tool
Twitter added a new tool to the Publisher Insight portion of Media Studio. With it, publishers can see tweets they may have missed using the social network’s content listening tools, which go beyond Hashtags and mentions.
Tweets that are found are displayed on a customizable dashboard that allows publishers to see what people are saying about them minute-by-minute, over time.
The conversation insights tool includes a number of features such as:
- An interactive graph that displays the number of tweets there are about the publisher
- The top accounts that are talking about the publisher or engaging with its content, filtered by frequency or follower count
- A timeline of tweets about the publisher that can be filtered by follower engagement thresholds as well as tweet format, language, and verification status.
In the future, publishers will be able to engage with tweets, share tweets or reply directly using the tool.
Follow Specific Topics
After several months of testing, Twitter is launching the new topics option which allows users to follow specific topics and have the two appear within their Twitter stream along with the specific accounts they follow.
On your home timeline and in search results, users will see prompts to follow topics. Tap the follow button in the prompt and your Twitter experience will be personalized based on your interest in the topic. The platform may also match you with other topics that they think you would be interested in and based on your activity and profile such as the tweets you view or like.
This feature is intended to improve tweet discovery and boost engagement. By highlighting more relevant content instead of putting it on users to find the key accounts to follow, Twitter is trying to make it easier for users to stay in touch with conversations of interest while cutting out some of the junk that flows through their Twitter stream.
Remove Me From This Conversation
According to Twitter’s VP of Design and Research, Dantley Davis, there are five main features that he’s looking forward to in 2020. Of course, this doesn’t mean they are definitively on the way, but considering the source, there’s a good chance that we can expect to see the remove me from this conversation along with several other features to be rolled out within the next 6 months.
This option would allow you to remove yourself from a tweet exchange the same way you can currently remove yourself from Twitter’s direct messages. At this time there’s no way to remove yourself from a conversation if you’re directly mentioned or tagged in an image so you can mute the conversation which does have a similar effect. This approach, however, would provide a clear separation to help you remove yourself from spammers.
Tweet This Only To These Friends, Hashtag or Interest
This feature has been discussed before Twitter’s Head of Product discussed it in an interview with The Verge and followed it up with a tweet poll posted by Twitter product designer Brittany Forks. This option would allow you to choose specific audiences for your tweets which may provide a new range of considerations for tweet communication. This approach would allow for morning close chats and discussions that don’t take over the feeds of other less interested followers.
These additions would give Twitter users more control over their conversations while potentially opening up new use cases for the platform. Of course, there’s nothing definitive here because they have not been confirmed but they do offer interesting food for thought on additional features.
Remove This @Mention from This Conversation
With this approach, the other people mentioned in your tweets can remove themselves from the conversation. Though it seems similar to the remove me from this conversation option, the fact that this is also an option leads us to believe that you would not be able to remove @mentions from other users’ tweets.
Don’t Allow People to @Mention Me Without My Permission
This is a safety measure that would allow you to stop people from adding you to a tweet thread unless you approve it. This may be helpful for those dealing with abuse or bullying or to get rid of trolls who are only mentioning your profile to get under your skin. This option allows you to avoid blocking them outright but gives you more control over your on-platform presence.
Don’t Allow RT of This Tweet
At first, there doesn’t seem like there would be a lot of situations where you wouldn’t want your tweet to be amplified. However, if you’re replying to someone directly and you don’t want it taken out of context, it could be useful to turn off retweets. Or if a tweet of yours is blowing up for the wrong reasons, you may be able to turn retweets off after the fact. Getting rid of the option to retweet could also prompt more direct engagement. If you are unable to quote tweet or retweet someone, you may be more inclined to reply to them about it instead.
Testing Emoji-Like Reactions for DMs
Twitter is testing the use of emoji-like reactions for direct messages. It is highly similar to what Facebook added to Messenger in 2017. That feature allows users to designate an emoji response to each specific message.
Testing a Switch Accounts Option
In early November, it was noted Twitter is testing out a new option that would enable users to switch accounts within the tweet reply process. Doing so makes it easier to manage multiple account interactions on the go which is a wonderful option for social media managers who handled multiple accounts.
this feature could help those who manage multiple accounts keep tabs on relevant mentions and activities but also act on the same at any time. This is functionality similar to what’s already available in TweetDeck where you can switch over to an alternate account and any time when responding to a tweet. At this time, there is no word on a full roll-out of account switching within tweet replies.
