Twitter is testing a new way of showing users how each tweet has been shared, according to app sleuth Jane Manchun Wong. Right now, if a post has been retweeted, there’s a counter showing how many times. What Twitter appears to be toying with is adding a separate counter for retweets that have comments attached to them, as well as a tabbed UI for easily switching between counters once you’ve open them up. These changes are already live in the iOS version of the app, so it was a matter of time before Android caught up.
We’ve all gotten used to Wong’s investigative insights in recent years, particularly when it comes to social media apps. Her latest discovery isn’t earth-shattering, by any means, but it would serve as an easy way to see retweets with interesting comments without having to open each and every one as you would currently have to do. For tweets that have a lot of engagement, that could be invaluable to people seeking further information or commentary.
Twitter is testing to show a separate “x Retweets with comments” row
They are also implementing the tabbed Retweets page for Android, so that’s pretty sweet 🙂 pic.twitter.com/PBE9cgvPSX
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) May 8, 2020
The tabbed interface would also be an elegant approach for switching between views. Twitter isn’t fast to iterate its UI, but when it does, it tends to be worthwhile — these changes would be no different. There’s no telling how long it’ll be until we see this in our feeds, but since it’s already in the Twitter app for iPhone and it’s clearly at an advanced stage of testing, it shouldn’t be long.
