Twitter, with its defining characteristics of conversation, makes our life easier in today’s world. It is one such platform, where individuals can gather and talk about what’s going on around the world – be it politics, sports, entertainment or emergencies.
But this popular social media channel was difficult to follow conversations on.
Twitter Conversations
With the aim to make its followers again fall in love with this social network, Twitter revamped the way Twitter conversations unfold in your timeline. This introduction has been marked as good news for its mainstream users who, for a long time, had been asking for a sensible way to follow longer conversations. It has also released an update for iOS, Android and Web application with a new interface for conversations to take place and enhanced the sharing and abuse reporting capabilities.
This is undoubtedly a great update for the users who can now see the entire Twitter conversation between the people they follow in their timeline against the standalone @replies that have been sent. This will allow context-free tweets and users will get a better understanding of what’s being tweeted back in forth in a conversation.
Conversations are an important part of the Twitter world as it’s essentially how users interact with each other and build threads around any topic of interest. While Twitter’s native app allowed an individual to track and follow conversations if they happened to appear in their timeline, those apps did not make Twitter conversations an integral part of the user’s timeline.
With this new interface, conversations will appear in a chronological order in your timeline. The first three tweets that are a part of the conversation will be connected with a blue colored vertical line (as pictured above). In a nutshell, users can view more than one tweet at one time. Most importantly the entire Twitter conversation thread can be checked with a simple click on any one tweet. Users can also see the replies given by other people they do not follow.
Does Twitter Have a Plan for Android, iOS and Web Apps?
Yes, it most likely does. The biggest advantage with this update is that the iOS and Android apps also allow users to share any Twitter conversation with anyone over email. Android apps allow the users to share their tweets through direct messages and offers a ‘report tweet’ button in the app as part of the update.
Here lies the difference. Previously, this specific feature was available on third-party apps and this is not the end, there will be more updates. The new change has also brought the ability to report abuse or a spam tweet directly from Twitter to the Android app and Twitter Web interface. Although some of you had seen this feature on Twitter for iPhone before, it will be rolling out gradually to other users as well.
The apps now come in handy on phones with limited internal storage. But how, is probably your next question in mind. Twitter has reduced the size of its Android app for entry-level Android Smartphones. The twitter app is now half the previous size making it faster to download and providing more space for other apps in the phone.
The change in the Twitter conversation pattern will theoretically introduce endurance into the mix and thus keep people more engaged in micro conversation within real-time discussions. The video below explains more.
Images: Twitter
This feature has been available in the Chrome extension Tweetdeck for awhile and it’s really handy when someone makes a comment and you need the thread for context. I think it’s a great addition.
William Johnson
Yes mate, the new feature enables to keep you on track with the entire conversation and the tweetbakcs.
So THAT’s what the line’s about. I remember when I first noticed that. I didn’t like it and I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand what it was for – only that Twitter had changed the furniture for some reason.
William Johnson
Hope my post have helped you to have an idea about the changes which twitter has incorporated.
It’s definitely helped, William, as I really didn’t have the foggiest clue what Twitter was up to! I simply rolled my eyes at it when I first saw it and left them to their own devices.
So thanks for explaining. I get it now.
efpierce
Is this brand new? I haven’t seen it yet and I use Twitter almost daily. I am going to have to look closer from now on. I just get so used to doing things one way and I have a routine with Twitter for my business purposes that I don’t break away from.
William Johnson
Twitter has brought this feature in the previous month itself.
Aira Bongco
I said this awhile ago in your other post and I’m going to say it again. Twitter is now targeting the mobile market. You can see it from their layout and their plans to acquire MoPub. But we will see if this will be the right direction for the company.
William Johnson
Considering the importance of social media marketing in the present age, I guess twitter is heading towards the right direction.
Martin Lindeskog
William Johnson:
Thanks for sharing this new feature. I have been wondering about this line for some time. Could you embed the whole conversation into a blog post?