Finally, Twitter felt the heat from the intense competition of Tik Tok and Instagram and decided to do something about it.
In Twitter’s latest attempt to retain its status in the social media world, they have added new features to potentially boost engagement and virality in posts/ads.
Coincidentally, these changes and major updates to the 16-year-old social platform come after Elon Musk seeks to rescind his buyout. The decision was made after Twitter failed to provide metrics on real vs. fake accounts.
Although these changes don’t affect the majority of Twitter users, it is helpful to be aware of these changes for either your leisure on Twitter or if you are one of the people able to experience the rollout of the new features.
FIRST UPDATE: BRANDED LIKES
Who can use this: Any advertiser in the U.S., U.K., & Japan
What is this? Branded likes are animated “like” features. When a brand utilizes this, they are able to create a small animation once a user “likes” their tweet advertisement. Rather than the typical heart icon that we usually see, we will now see an interactive animation that will hopefully produce more engagement and virality for the advertisement, giving brands a better opportunity to become successful on their ads.
If you are not an advertiser, you may be thinking “okay well, how does this affect me?” The short answer is, that it doesn’t affect you much. However, being aware of this is pretty cool if you’re scrolling on Twitter and happen to see one of these animations. Happy scrolling!
SECOND UPDATE: TWITTER NOTES
Who can use this: Selected groups of users on Twitter
What is this: The fascinating thing about Twitter is that users have learned how to be creative, comedic, and entertaining in under 280 characters. To some, this can be challenging. However, this is the charm that twitter holds.
Twitter seems to have heard the requests and is testing a new feature: NOTES. This feature allows specific users to attach a “Note”, which is essentially an extension to the tweet they are writing. One example of the use of it is if a chef tweets “I just made the BEST peach cobbler 🍑” and attaches a note to the tweet with the recipe for the dessert. This allows users to engage more with the tweet and the user while going to the platform for more long-formed information
This idea seems to have great potential. However, why is Twitter limiting this to specific users? Are they just testing it out for a short period of time? Or is this updated model here to stay?
Regardless of how you use Twitter, now you are one step ahead of the game and can hopefully use these to your advantage. With so many changes taking place to our social networks, we’re anticipating updates and added competitive edges to come to our favorite platforms! Check back here for more information, or subscribe to our newsletter to get monthly updates on everything that took place while you were working.