Since its inception, Twitter has been about content material that is brief and candy. Originally capped at 140 characters, the utmost size of tweets was doubled to 280 in 2018. While this provides slightly more respiration room to specific opinions, the restrict nonetheless forces customers to be concise – or resort to tweet threads.But a brand new choice could be on the horizon. Evidence has been unearthed that Twitter is engaged on a brand new function referred to as Twitter Articles. If the function finally ends up seeing the sunshine of day, it will function an alternative choice to a tweetstorm, posting {links} to lengthier articles hosted elsewhere, or posting pictures of passages of textual content.
News of the function got here courtesy of serial tipster Jane Manchun Wong, who shared her discovering on Twitter:
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The screenshot doesn't give away a terrific deal, but it surely does present that Twitter Articles could be given their very own devoted part throughout the app.As there was no official phrase about Articles from Twitter – coupled with the truth that the function was solely discovered by a widely known reverse engineer ferreting round in-app code – it's inconceivable to say when (or, certainly, if) the flexibility to put up long-form articles will land on TwitterWhen contacted by Social Media Today in regards to the discovery, Twitter commented that it's "..always looking into new ways to help people start and engage in conversations". The firm did say that it will supply up more info soon.
Analysis: shifting away from its origins
Keeping issues brief and candy has lengthy been Twitter's raison d'etre. For years, the character restrict has prevented customers from waxing too lyrically too often, serving to to maintain content material flowing in simply digestible chunks.But there have lengthy been very vocal bands of customers who've been demanding change. Some want to see the addition of an Edit button to make it potential to amend tweets to appropriate spelling errors, however that is one thing that – rightly or wrongly – has been dismissed by Twitter. There have been issues that the flexibility to edit tweeted materials after the very fact could result in confusion and the unfold of misinformation.There have additionally been loads of requires additional will increase to the tweet character size, and that is one thing that Twitter has resisted for a while. But with the possible arrival of Twitter Articles, it appears that evidently the corporate is bowing to stress – albeit in a barely totally different solution to what many individuals would have hoped or anticipated.While longer tweets will be welcomed by many, Twitter Articles would point out fairly a change of course for Twitter and take it additional away from its roots. But having branched out with choices which as Twitter Blue subscriptions and the Super Follow function, it's potential that Twitter Articles could be a function that's solely made obtainable to a subset of customers – and it could see Twitter remodeling into a special kind of publishing platform that competes with a barely totally different sector.
Via: Social Media Today