With Elon Musk’s takeover of the company looming in the distance, Twitter apparently isn’t slowing down when it comes to updates, as the company is reportedly working on a new way to "award" tweets, as well as new options for multimedia tweets and new features to easily display status’ and pronouns on your profile.
Discovered by 9to5Google contributor Dylan Roussel, Twitter’s in-progress status feature appears to center around discovery for profiles and tweets, rather than just showing off what you’re doing, as upon tapping on a profile’s status, users are prompted with buttons to either “discover” or “join” the displayed status.
Alongside Twitter’s recently announced “Circles” feature that allows you to create tight-knit groups of up to 150 friends, this new status feature should allow users to better find and get to know one another in order to build communities of the often quite combative social media app.
In the pursuit of having the app’s users better respect and get along with one another, Twitter is also planning to implement a new pronouns page that will give that inclusivity boosting information a proper home, rather than just having it be an optional extra in users’ bios.
Uh oh! @Twitter is working on giving users the ability to give awards to tweets with a button between "Like/React" & "Share" !It's unclear how exactly it will work, but tweets will show the total number of awards given to it. pic.twitter.com/MD5axNi7hYMay 4, 2022
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As well as two social-focused features being in development, Twitter is also hoping to keep users from potentially ditching the platform by finally allowing for multimedia tweets, saving users from the plight of picking between images or a video when attaching media to a tweet.
In Roussel’s report, Twitter is shown to also be working on a major new addition to the app that will allow users to give “awards” to tweets they particularly enjoy. As the most barebones of the discovered features, it is currently unclear as to how the awards will work, if they will have monetary value, if they will be exclusive to Twitter Blue, or when the feature will be released.
Analysis: Cultivating or culling communities?
As Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter looks more inevitable as the deal closes, many users have voiced their concerns about just how much good unabashed free speech will do for the app’s already hostile environment.
It’s unclear as to whether these new features have been in the pipeline for some time, or if they’ve been fast-tracked ahead of future owner Elon Musk’s arrival.
Hopefully, they’ll give users some common ground to unite and be friendly to one another, rather than giving some users more ammunition to attack one another’s beliefs, as Twitter certainly doesn’t need more of that.