Twitter UI Overhaul Begins Later This Week, Long Form Tweets to Come in Early February

Twitter is said to be getting an overhaul to its UI over the course of the next couple of months. According to Elon Musk, the first instance of this “much larger UI overhaul” is arriving this week as an “easy swipe” function to move between recommended and followed Tweets. Long-form Tweets are to follow in “early February.”

Announced via a Tweet, Musk claims that the swipe functionality will see users being able to swipe left and right on their Twitter feed to move between what can only be assumed as recommended Tweets from the algorithm and the latest Tweets from followers. While no specific date is given, this feature is expected to arrive “later this week.”

Musk also states that a bookmark function will become available before Twitter receives its long-form Tweet update. Launching next week, bookmarks are said to be a “de facto silent like.” One could almost expect the bookmark function to work similarly to the bookmark button on Instagram or the liked videos on TikTok, where users can find an ongoing catalogue of bookmarked Tweets.

Finally, long-form Tweets are to arrive in early February. This feature will greatly expand the current 280-character limit Twitter has on each Tweet. Back in December, Musk replied to a Tweet asking if Twitter was considering increasing the character limit from 280 to 4,000. Musk responded with a clear-cut “yes.” This will be the second major character limit increase. In 2017, Twitter doubled the character limit to 280, up from its previous 140.

Twitter has long been referred to as a “micro-blogging site.” The expansion of character limits to a reported 4,000 will enable users to write and create much more in-depth Tweets. However, with this must come concessions on the UI. Musk confirms long-form Tweets will “get the same timeline space” as other Tweets. However, Twitter will receive a ‘read more’ option, similar to Facebook. Over on the Meta-owned platform, longer posts are truncated on a feed and require users to click into them in order to see the full post.

“The goal is to allow people to publish long-form natively on Twitter, rather than forcing them to use another website,” Musk writes. Looking on into the future, Musk claims that Twitter users will also gain the ability to add bold, underline & font size options. These are expected to launch within the current quarter.

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