Twitter Testing New Features That Encourage More Conversations On Its Platform

Twitter is testing a bunch of new features that’s intended to encourage more engagement among its users. One of the new features being tested is an updated thread view, which makes replies look more like traditional SMS text messages.

Early prototypes of the new features that Twitter is currently testing out were given some hands-on time with The Verge. The updated thread view is said to look more like regular SMS conversations rather than a simple list of replies to a tweet. Conversations in a thread have different highlighted colors for the original poster and for people making the replies. When a user receives a reply from a person they follow, the message will also be shown with a different color. Twitter product manager Sara Haider actually showed what this will look like last month.

Since this redesign is intended to encourage more conversations on Twitter, a new reply field will be present underneath every tweet on the user’s timeline, according to 9To5Mac. The new reply field will sit right above the retweet, like and DM buttons.

Another feature that Twitter is testing is a presence indicator. This feature is basically a way for users to tell their followers that they are currently active on Twitter. Users will simply have to flip on a switch to set their availability. Twitter is also planning to add the ability to add statuses when users turn on their presence indicator.

The last feature that Twitter is testing is what’s called as “ice breaker,” which functions a lot like pinned tweets. Users would be able to pin an “ice breaker” on top of their profile to let their followers know what they currently want to talk about. Again, this is a feature focused on encouraging conversations on the platform and boosting user engagement.

Twitter didn’t indicate if it plans to roll out any of the new features to all users. Right now, they are only being tested by Twitter employees.