Twitter has announced a makeover of sorts to a popular feature on its mobile app: Conversations. The tweak is supposed to make conversation threads easier to join and to view, with many users complaining that the Tweets and replies were hard to differentiate in the past. Instead, replies from accounts you follow will now be shown directly below the “parent” Tweet as indented, threaded replies, with a lines drawn to show that a conversation is going on.
While you could still view threads and conversations in the past, the app wouldn’t necessarily list responses to certain Tweets as part of a thread, which meant that it was often hard to tell which Tweet was a standard one, and which was a reply to another Tweet.
Given that one of Twitter’s apparent strengths is the quality conversation and discussion that happens aboard the platform (not always, it must be said), the update is one that should be welcome by most. However, the update is limited to iOS devices for now, although the new layout should make its way to Android devices soon, too.
According to the company, this new layout will allow users to “see who’s replying to who”, so that it’s easier to “join in on relevant conversations”. That sounds like Twitter’s new change is aimed at getting users to engage with each other more, rather than scrolling through their feeds—sort of like Instagram Stories.
In fact, you could argue that social media is moving towards a new way of doing things in general. In the past, we had social media giants like Facebook and Instagram (also owned by Facebook) have timeline or news feed style pages, where you would scroll through pages of stuff and leave a response or comment if you felt like it.
Instead, the development of ideas like “Stories” on Instagram, Facebook, or even messaging apps like WhatsApp has shown the importance of continually evolving in the digital space. Now, it appears, that everyone is focusing on a continuous, global, conversation.
