Twitter has been undergoing some tests and changes. These have intensified since Elon Musk, the founder and owner of high-tech companies such as Tesla and SpaceX, acquired the app at the end of April 2022.
Elon Musk plans for Twitter
Musk has some great development plans for the platform. He intends to double Twitter’s user base in just 2.5 years and to quadruple it in the next 5 years. Moreover, he wants to significantly reduce the company’s income dependency on advertising, while at the same time, increasing Twitter’s revenue 5 times. All this by 2028.
Changes to the app
While no one is certain how exactly Elon Musk envisions to achieve all these goals, several actions have been noticed on Twitter for some time now. They may not be the direct effect of the takeover and the above-noted plan, however they surely lead to a Twitter of tomorrow. Let’s have a closer look at some of them:
- More media in a single tweet. It has been a while that Twitter is testing new options to insert various forms of media into a tweet. Up till now Twitter was identified as a media outlet using quick, frequent messages being exchanged. New options could allow users to additionally attach video, images and GIFs as reactions to a single tweet.
- More personalized, updated layout. Twitter is currently testing a new format where in the area of “Trends” users will be able to choose between two content feeds. One option to be indicated as “Personalized” would display the most popular content that at the same time matches user interests. The second option, “Top Trends”, would bring the content that is trendiest at a time. This layout may remind of Tik Tok, however it seems like a smart improvement move.
- Full Spaces Analytics. After some tests, a full version of Spaces Analytics has been made available to broadcasting hosts on Android and iOS. The tool enables hosts to have better insights of the broadcast and the audience, showing the duration on air, number of co-hosts and speakers and the total number of people that tuned in, further split between the live listeners, speakers and recording replies. The analytics also facilitate the option to follow the speakers and co-hosts by listing them down for the host.
- Twitter Circles for your private chats. Twitter has recently been testing its new feature called Twitter Circle, which is an extension of Twitter’s reply control (where users can decide who can reply to their tweets). Twitter Circles allows users to create a group of up to 150 selected contacts with which they will be able to share the content they want. Members of a Circle are informed that tweets are not publicly available but belong to a closed group.
- Twitter cleans the junk messages. Twitter have been actively working towards reduction of spam, bot junk messages across the platform, which usually copy and paste messages with different @user tags. Twitter claims that such messages will be now detected, reviewed and eventually removed.
We do not know how Twitter will change exactly and where will it be in the near future. The evidence right now though is that the platform has been undergoing some changes and surely it is on a good way to remain one of the key social media applications.
Sources:
https://twitter.com/TwitterSpaces/status/1521933072819761158/photo/2
