Here’s another one for the ‘Musker’ books: Chief Twit Elon Musk confirmed over the weekend that Twitter will be bringing back its side-swipe option to switch between the algorithmic and chronological timeline sometime this week, with an update to its bookmarks UI already penciled in for next week.
Twitter has already shared examples of how both of these updates will look, with the former actually being released early last year, before Twitter rolled it back because it annoyed people too much.
Alternative Feeding
Twitter Engineer Andrea Conway has recently shared an image of the updated bookmark button, which should get a more prominent placement on the Tweet detail screen soon. Musk believes that more people will engage with more Tweets if they’re aware that the bookmark function, which he says is hidden by some ‘obscure UI’, actually exists. At the same time, he’s floated the idea around of including bookmarks in a Tweet’s like count – though it’s not entirely clear why people would see bookmarks as a viable alternative to ‘Likes’.
To add, Musk says that long-form Tweets will also be coming this February. That, at least at this stage, should see Tweets displayed in their regular size and format in-stream, topped off with a ‘Show more’ prompt at the end. That should provide an alternative to long Tweet threads, and Musk is hoping that the capacity to share longer updates will incentivize creators enough to post more content on the app, instead of linking people externally.
However, it’s highly speculated that the UI might change as a result. It’s easy to surmise that a lot of people might not even notice the ‘Show more’ prompt, which might prompt Musk and Co. to make it more prominent if they mean to boost awareness. More updates on this when they actually announce them.
Lastly, Musk has also announced that new text formatting options will soon be integrated into the Twitter UI, enabling users to add classic font styles such as bold, underlined, and italicized text. Seems like we’ll finally be able to create Tweets with bigger fonts. These could facilitate new ways to engage via Tweet, with different emphases adding another element to your short missives.
From the perspective of brand use, the impact of each of these updates should be minimal, if not negligible. Side-swipe timelines weren’t popular when Twitter first tried them, so it’s a bit difficult imagining that they’d be much more relevant now. If they do see more use, however, then that could potentially reduce your Tweet exposure because the algorithm would no longer be able to show your Tweets to as many users in the main feed.
The Wrap
Bookmarks could be an element to watch if ever Twitter does decide to make a bigger move into shipping and product listing, with users able to use bookmarks as a means to flag items of interest. Meanwhile, it’s still too early to tell whether or not long-form Tweets build up any sort of relevance. Test formatting options add another consideration to your Tweet process and could potentially spark interesting new usage trends. Again, nothing big, but these, at the least, are functionally useful.
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