Remember Twitter statuses? The company has experimented with some variant of the feature several times, last time in 2019 when it announced a test, which never resulted in a wide release.
The status feature will be familiar to Facebook users, who have the ability to set a “status” to give additional context to their posts. And just like Facebook’s version, the latest iteration of the Twitter status only lets you set a status from a predetermined, finite list of statuses.
Some of the statuses on offer are “spoiler alert,” “AMA,” “hot take,” “vacation mode,” “unpopular opinion,” “soon,” “working hard, hardly working,” and “shower thoughts.” Given that Twitter users often do use emoji and certain phrases to mark the type of post they’ve written (the most common example of this is probably the “thread” emoji), the feature will probably see some use. Note that, in its previous iteration, users were able to set anything as status, and now they’re limited to 20 or so options.
The statuses are clickable, and if you click one, you’ll get a list of other public tweets which used the same status or phrase.
“For a limited time, we are testing a feature that allows you to add a status topic from a predetermined list to your Tweets to provide more context for your followers. So whether you are about to drop a hot Tweet thread, share your shower thoughts, or have a bad case of the Mondays, your Tweets can better convey what you are up to,” a Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch.
The company also said that the feature is being tested for a limited time with a select group of users in the U.S. and Australia.
Amidst the botched Elon Musk takeover drama, Twitter has been launching new features left and right. Some of the most interesting ones are longform Notes, co-tweets, and Twitter Circle, which allows you to tweet only to a pre-selected group of followers. Not all of the features Twitter tests will become widely available, so we’ll see how the status updates fare.
