Twitter has a history of studying how people use its service and then creating features to make what they’re doing easier. The Retweet, @reply, and hashtag are examples of this.
A few years ago people started creatively stitching Tweets together to share more information or tell a longer story – like this. Twitter saw this approach (which it calls “threading”) as an innovative way to present a train of thought, made up of connected but individual elements.
Now, hundreds of thousands of threads are Tweeted every day. But this method of Tweeting, while effective and popular, can be tricky for some to create and it’s often tough to read or discover all the Tweets in a thread. That’s why Twitter is making it simpler to thread Tweets together, and to find threads, so it’s easier for people to express themselves on Twitter and stay informed.
Twitter has made it easy to create a thread by adding a plus button in the composer, so people can connect their thoughts and publish their threaded Tweets all at the same time. They can continue adding more Tweets to their published thread at any time with the new “Add another Tweet” button. Additionally, it’s now simpler to spot a thread – Twitter has added an obvious “Show this thread” label.
A few weeks ago, Twitter expanded its character count to make it easier for people to fit what they’re thinking into a Tweet. But people also may want to serialize a longer story or thought, or provide ongoing commentary on an event or topic. That’s where this update to threads comes in. People been using threads in creative ways like these for years – the ways and reasons to thread Tweets are limited only by imagination.
These updates are rolling out to everyone on iOS, Android, and Twitter.com in the coming weeks. The app needs to be updated for the feature to be available.
