In an effort to make it easier for Twitter users to find posts from the original tweeter within a thread, Twitter is testing a new tag ‘Original Tweeter’ which is shown beneath their user’s Twitter handle. Twitter has confirmed the experiment to TechCrunch, noting that it has been rolled out to a “small percentage” of iOS and Android users.
“Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation. As part of this work, we’re exploring adding more context to discussions by highlighting relevant replies – like those from the original Tweeter,” Twitter’s director of Product Management Sara Haider told TechCrunch in a statement.
In practice, this will probably be most helpful for situations like distinguishing Elon Musk from the Ethereum-hocking false copies popping up below him.
The tag should also ensure that users don’t read every character of a user’s handle before they can tell if it’s trusted information. While Twitter is verifying more and more accounts, it is still allowing them to frequently change their names or profile pictures. This new tag, however, could avert some imitation issues.
For now, the feature has been rolled out to a limited number of users so the exact way to distinguish the “owner” of a Twitter thread could still change in the future.
In a recent app release, Twitter has also introduced some other changes, such as colour-coded replies, that give users more prominent interface cues about the threads they are viewing.
