This is another one of Twitter’s projects that ‘have been in development for some time’ – years now, really – without any other way to phrase it, Twitter has begun an initial live test of its new ‘Status’ feature with select users in both Australia and the US. Really, a ‘Status’ feature on Twitter? Now there’s an idea. It would seem that the ‘Public Square’ is now moving to become a ‘Public Amphitheater’.

What’s Your Status? 

If you’re among the pool of chosen users that are given access to the option, you’ll be prompted by a new pop-up alert when you open the app. From there, you’ll be able to add a status indicator to your Tweets, with a total of 17 activity options to choose from, including ‘Hot Take’, ‘Traveling’, ‘Shower Thoughts’, and ‘A Case of the Mondays’. Honestly, these are pretty witty statuses, akin more to modern pop culture ideas and web-speak. Good research on your part here Twitter.

Choosing a marker will then see it added to your Tweets, then later displayed in-stream. At this stage, however, you can’t add your own custom status marker just yet and are limited to just these 17 options. Perhaps in the future, that could be an expansion of the tool, alleviating the need for users to add event Hashtags to their usernames to indicate attendance. It’s not hard to imagine how such a feature would update similarly to how emoji sets receive new icons. Each ‘update’ would simply add more elements to your ‘Status’.

This seemed to be one of the key use cases for status markers when Twitter first introduced it in testing back in 2018. The presentation has evolved much since then, but the idea seemed to suggest that Twitter was specifically creating this element with event tags in mind to help users better connect around real-world functions. This is what people do on Twitter anyway, right? It’s interesting to see that through development, its Status tool has morphed into something else entirely.

The big question now is, will these status markers even improve your Tweet experience? Will they add any sort of value? Well, we can’t really conclude since the blasted things are still being tested now, can we? Here’s a suggestion, instead of being cynics, let’s have Twitter try them out on live first, eh? While it’s something ‘new’, at least for Twitter, they do think that there’s something to be had from them. We can all hold Twitter to having done its conversations research at least, determining some of the most commonly Tweeted terms that it can then add to these indicators.

The Wrap

Twitter announced the official test pool to TechCrunch. Again, it’s in testing, so let’s positively reinforce it instead of straight up asking questions that you would only regularly ask if something gets launched officially. It’ll certainly attract some attention, that much we’re sure of.

Think of it this way, at least now you’ll be able to share with others that the amazing quote your uploaded yesterday which got thousands of reactions was a mere product of ‘Shower Thoughts’, which I believe is a massive humble brag – a good internet validation point for anyone, any day.

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Sources

https://bit.ly/3BpPnjm