7 Twitter Design and Feature Updates

Over the period of past six months, the one social networking website to go through a phenomenal change is our chubby blue bird, Twitter. The site has gone through several small and big design and feature changes to enhance the user experience and improve the overall user engagement in the site.

Now, we know it is difficult to keep up with the all the chirping updates, so we have compiled together the most prominent features and changes in the site. If not eye openers and game changers, hopefully, they will prove to be of some help, the next time you tweet.

The 140 Character Limit Renewed

The debate regarding the limit imposed has always been there in the Twitter circle with some arguing that the limit should be there others beg to differ. Though the character limit allows Twitter to be the fastest way to spread the message, ideas or any piece of information, but it is the addition of media links that takes up the space of 23 characters in a tweet. Therefore, Twitter has announced that very soon the images, polls, videos attached to any tweet will be excluded from the 140 character count. The same rule will also apply to @handle, when you re-tweet or reply to someone else’s tweet. A study conducted by hubspot revealed that tweets with images got 150% more re-tweets and 18% more clicks.

Accessible Images

source

In October last year, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey appealed the public to suggest ideas for improving the product performance. One of the few ideas received focused on making Twitter more accessible to visually impaired by including detailed alt text so that they understand the message better by using assistive technology like a screen reader or Braille display.

One of the reasons accessible images is not gaining mass adoption is because it needs to be set up by the user. It can easily be set up n Android or iOS device by updating the twitter settings. You just have to tap accessibility and turn on the compose image description feature. After this whenever you compose a tweet and add a image, tap add description to insert descriptive text.

The Personal Connect Feature

Earlier in Twitter, following a bunch of organizations, celebrities, groups, channels had the missing value attached to it. It was more like a news and information ticker. It was even pointed out to the company by a list of investors, that Twitter needed to get interesting and custom if it needed to increase its user base.

Now, Twitter has finally heard their plea, and has re imagined and customized the experience of finding people in Twitter. The company released the connect tab, a new feature that allows you to scan your contacts to find people to follow. Along with this it also provides recommendations based on your location, interests, pages and account liked by you. This new feature might help you make your feed interesting to look at.

Go Live Button for Periscope

Since a long time Facebook has been gaining much user engagement with the live streaming videos, by giving its own tab in the mobile app and prioritizing the live streams in the feeds.

Twitter, which acquired periscope last year has been slow in implementing the format. But finally the implementation began with the Android phones, and the go live button that comes with the update connects to periscope and enables you to broadcast directly through Twitter.

The live streaming helps to control the tweetstorm and clutter in the feeds. You can compile and publish longer thoughts and responses with this video format feature.  The live feature is considered to be the most powerful tool in Twitter.

Native GIF Search

Now this feature is obviously dear to the numerous GIF lovers out there. As per the reports in 2015, people shared round about 100 million GIFs in Twitter. The numbers are even more impressive for sharing an animated image on the site. Previously you had to leave twitter and go to several GIF search engines to search for the right response and then download, save and then go back to twitter and finally upload. Today, Twitter’s new GIF feature allows you to click and conduct the search then and there, preserving the saving and uploading time.

The Switch to Uncropped Photos

The feature gained much praise as the users are no more required to forcefully crop the images and lower the quality of the visual experience. Not only this along with the uncropped photo update Twitter also released a new view for multi photo displays. Now you will be able to see more percentage of the individual photos included in a collage.

Increased Anti-harassment Features

One of the more serious concerns of any networking site is how quickly can the harassment spread on the network. Previously the tweets that were composed to threaten and scare individuals received no filtration or blockage and in turn caused many users to delete their accounts. Now, Twitter has started to respond to harassments and threats available on network with a series of features that are aimed to keeping people safe. Some of the features include are blocking the indecent content, launching of Twitter Safety Center and the Trust and Safety Council and applying more stringent policy for abusive behavior.

With all the features and updates it is clearly evident the company is planning to increase the user base by improving the experience exponentially with all technology, design and safety updates.Comment us about your thoughts on the new updates and also let us know, if you would want the company to include or exclude some more features. We cannot promise, but we will try to chirp the message to the bird.