Twitter Testing ‘Talking About’ Feature Displaying Total Tweet Engagement

Twitter is testing a potential new feature that allows users to see how many people are currently “talking about” certain tweets, whether they be from celebrities, athletes, politicians, or anyone that has made an individual, popular tweet.

According to a new report from TechCrunch, this new feature is displayed beneath some embedded tweets when they appear outside of Twitter itself, and looks to replace both the retweet count and the reply count into one cumulative total.
As shown in the image below, this new feature is currently just an experiment for the micro-blogging platform, says Dan Jackson, a Twitter spokesperson. The feature, however, is currently part of Twitter’s continuing experiments in exploring new ways to provide more “social context around tweets.”

The feature is certainly a different way to reframe social metrics that would otherwise be a bit confusing to a certain audience that isn’t familiar with using the social media platform on a daily basis.

According to the report, “retweets and replies involve a bit more mental gymnastics to grasp than a simple and direct expression of how many people are engaging with the material.”

This simplification of total tweet engagement – compiling everything into one, easy-to-read and understand number – is especially useful in embeds on platforms where individuals aren’t familiar with the platform. This feature allows the company to make its “internal success measure more externally relatable.”

While the feature is certainly an intriguing one, there is no word just yet on whether is will roll out to the social media platform worldwide.

Twitter recently announced it is testing a new feature that allows users to save tweets for later, called “Bookmarks.”

P.S. - Like our news? Support the site with a coffee/beer. Or shop with our Amazon link. We use affiliate links when possible--thank you for supporting independent media.