“At Twitter, we have a history of studying how people use our service and then creating features to make what they’re doing easier.”
That’s the beginning of a new blog post from Twitter posted on Tuesday. It’s a curious sentiment considering Twitter users have been clamoring for years for some kind of edit function and have yet to receive it, but we digress.
So even though that statement may not be entirely true, Twitter does like to roll out new features from time to time to meet the demands and needs of its users. In recent years, whether you like it or not, threads have become a major part of the daily discourse on the social media site. Any time a news story breaks, there are plenty of people in your timeline eager to spell out “what it all means” or “what happens next” in the form of an 87-part thread. That’s then retweeted by many other followers with the words “THREAD” above it just so you know.
https://twitter.com/immolations/status/864878373922799616
Sometimes a thread can provide some solid insight into a topic that you wouldn’t have otherwise known. Other times, a thread can be a gigantic waste of time that exists merely for the person to let you know that they’re smart.
1. @joshtpm's noble campaign to reclaim Kermit in the age of Pepe got me thinking about anthropomorphism & racism https://t.co/BX6H6kjW5A
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) October 3, 2016
“Threading” usually requires a manual approach. You write the first tweet, then a response to that tweet, then another response, and so on until you’re done. Hopefully, not too many people respond before you’re done responding, thereby muddying the waters and making your thread more difficult to track.
https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/940644608089788418
Now, Twitter is changing the process so that when you plan to thread, you can do so in a separate way that cuts out all those middlemen trying to respond before you’re done.
We’ve made it easy to create a thread by adding a plus button in the composer, so you can connect your thoughts and publish your threaded Tweets all at the same time. You can continue adding more Tweets to your published thread at any time with the new “Add another Tweet” button. Additionally, it’s now simpler to spot a thread – we’ve added an obvious “Show this thread” label.
The updates will be rolled out across iOS, Android, and Twitter.com over the next few weeks.
Now, between the recently expanded character count and an easy-to-thread button, there’s no limit to how overloaded your Twitterfeed can get. All the more reason for an edit button, but, alas…
Lol! Just give us an edit button!
TWITTER!! LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS!
— Ose. (@joeloseiga) December 12, 2017
https://twitter.com/Porus35/status/940654012470386688
Where is the edit button?
— Charnée (@madefor_this) December 12, 2017
…bruh we just want an edit button
— Kim (@Kanyeberly) December 12, 2017
[Twitter]
