At this point, it’s somewhat unsurprising to hear that Twitter is planning to shake things up, yet again.
In the latest of Elon Musk’s attempts at reviving Twitter, the company is apparently working on a new feature that will allow users to write more than just tweets. The idea is a rebranded version of another feature, formerly known as Notes. Musk confirmed this new addition in a tweet saying that it will enable users to create and publish long-form content with multimedia elements on the platform, with seemingly no limit – noting that one could even write a book if they wanted to.
Notes earlier allowed users to write up to 2,500 words. However, the feature did not gain much traction and was overshadowed by other updates, such as Twitter Blue, the subscription service which among various features includes one that extends the tweet length to 25,000 characters. Unlike the Notes feature though, Articles will have their own section on the platform and will support various types of media, such as photos, videos and embedded tweets. Articles will be shareable in tweets and will appear on users’ profiles.
Although the company has revealed very few details, the feature does sound incredibly similar to what another social media app Reddit already offers. Twitter has been struggling to retain users since Musk took over in October 2022. From introducing paid subscriptions to paywalls on the dashboard, the app has introduced and then backtracked on a lot of controversial features. Add to that, Meta’s ‘Twitter-killer’ app Threads proved to be extremely popular among users, giving an even bigger blow to Twitter. Just last week, the company announced its monetization program for creators, making certain content creators eligible to receive a portion of the ad revenue generated from ads displayed in their replies.
Just a week after Meta’s Threads made headlines for being a much better alternative to Twitter, the app announced imposing a rate limit to the posts in order to ward off spam accounts – in a move similar to Twitter. In July, Musk received backlash for a similar decision after users found themselves blocked from seeing content on Twitter due to daily rate limiting, after viewing a certain number of tweets.
With the increasing amount of competition in the tech industry, social media apps find themselves embroiled in a battle to capture our undivided attention – and they don’t shy away from borrowing features from their rivals. But many think these apps are not getting less innovative, and seem to be reaching a new point of saturation every day. Threads is doing well in the market in its first week, but many predict that it will also fall victim to a lack of innovation very soon.
