Twitter Reveals Potential Threaded Conversation Redesign, Online Status Indicator
While Twitter already has problems like online harassment and accounts that spread mis-information to deal with, the company also seems to be looking for ways to make the social network more enticing and easier to follow for new users. One of the latest examples is potential improvements to how conversations are displayed, as well displaying who's online. These features are still in testing, however, and aren't finalized with a planned rollout date.
Twitter's own director of product management, Sara Haider, posted a couple images on the social network, highlighting how the changes might look. The first is threaded replies, which is intended to make it easier follow a conversation and see who says what. The current look of the design clearly resembles comment threads on Facebook and other websites.
The online status feature would be intended to show followers if a user is currently online, and in turn make it easier to communicate with them. Fortunately, those following Haider's tweet were quick to point out that such an indicator could make the harassment problem much worse, which she then responded to by saying that users would have "full control" over sharing their online presence.
hey Twitter. we've been playing with some rough features to make it feel more conversational here. presence and reply threading. still early and iterating on these ideas. thoughts? pic.twitter.com/3U3NvpHWPy
— sara beykpour (@pandemona) August 31, 2018
There's certainly a potential for these changes, namely the threaded replies, to make Twitter easier to read and follow, but it doesn't seem likely to draw in new or lapsed users. There was no mention of a timeline for when these features might be released, and there's still the possibility they might not be released at all.
SOURCE Twitter/Sara Haider