There are a number of huge changes to Twitter in 2021. Twitter has announced a slew of new features and functions over the past few months all of which are extremely exciting and have the potential to drastically change your social media strategy on the platform.
We take a look at some of these upcoming changes to give you a head start on updating your social media strategy.
Twitter Blue
Twitter Blue was announced at the beginning of June and is a paid subscription service currently priced at around $3 a month. Currently the service is only available in Australia and Canada for the duration of its initial trial but Twitter intends to roll out this service worldwide by the end of the year.
It promises subscribers access to “premium features that give them more customization” over their Twitter experience. Although it is worth noting that Twitter Blue subscribers will still have ads and promoted tweets displayed to them.
One of the new features promised by the subscription service is the ability to “undo” tweets which lets you preview and revise your tweet before it goes live (with a customizable timer of up to 30 seconds to click “undo” before the tweet, reply, or thread you’ve sent posts to your timeline). After that, “Tweets that are already viewable to the public can’t be edited.” the company notes on it’s help website. This is not quite the long clamoured for “edit” option that has been a much requested feature since the platform started however it is a step in the right direction.
Other features are set to be included in Twitter Blue are bookmark folders to organize saved content. For free users, all your saved tweets are in one place and are not searchable. Twitter Blue adds folders to Bookmarks. It works exactly how you would expect. You can easily create folders on the Bookmarks page, and when you save a tweet, you can choose which folder it goes in. Folders are color-coded and have custom names. There’s also still an “All Bookmarks” folder to see them in one place.
Another inclusion is something called “reader mode” which strips away a lot of the Twitter UI to make threads read more like an article. Profile photos, usernames, timestamps, and live/retweet counts are removed from the threaded tweets to make it look more seamless.
It is very important to note that the free version of Twitter isn’t going anywhere and that the features for Twitter Blue are not something that was previously available and are just being locked behind a paywall, all these features are new. Their usefulness however is something you will have to decide for yourself.
Twitter blue is a paid subscription service that promises to change the way you interact with the app.
Twitter Spaces
Twitter spaces is something we have previously covered in our blog but just to refresh your memory, Spaces is Twitter’s answer to the currently iOS only Clubhouse.
Spaces is a new way to have live audio conversations on Twitter. Users can create rooms (called spaces) where they have full control over who can speak in that space. Think of this as a live version of a podcast where you can become a virtual audience member, listening to the user and the others they have selected to speak. Only once the space has closed, that’s it, there is no way to access the audio of the conversation.
Hosts can schedule a Space up to 14 days in advance and guests can sign up for reminder notifications from a scheduled Space card in a Tweet. When the Host starts the scheduled Space, the interested guests get notified via push and in-app notifications.
For now, all Spaces are public and anyone can join any Space as a Listener. If you create a Space or are a Speaker in a Space, your followers will see it at the top of their timeline near where your fleets are currently located.
Currently to start a space you must have at least 600 followers but the ability to join spaces is open to anyone.
Like we noted with Clubhouse, there is great potential for using spaces to help grow your business. Whether or not that be from using it as a way to give a voice to your brand or having the opportunity to get real feedback from customers or even take part in networking events.
Twitter Spaces is Twitter’s answer to Clubhouse
Ads in fleets
Fleets launched globally last November giving people a new feature that works incredibly similar to stories. Twitter has since announced that it will start adding full-screen ads to Fleets, and have been described by twitter as “full-screen billboards for advertisers”.
The ads will support images and video in 9:16, and videos can be up to 30 seconds long. Brands can choose to add a “swipe up” call-to-action and will be able to access standard Twitter ad metrics, including impressions, profile visits, clicks, website visits, and other information.
Twitter is touting the ads as a way to “drive awareness of new products, engage with your fan base, celebrate your brand advocates, offer promotions and giveaways, show behind-the-scenes looks and elevate your Tweets”.
Ads in Twitter fleets will work similar to the way it does on Instagram, placing full screen adverts in between other users fleets.
These changes all have the potential to have an impact on your business in different ways, however how you choose to utilise them will entirely depend on your business and the wants and needs of your customers and audience. But it is very clear to see that these changes are set to have a big impact on the course that a lot of companies take on Twitter, forever.
Are these changes something your company will utilise or does your company need that additional help to take your social media to the next level? Feel free to get in touch with us and we would be happy to help.
