Twitter is building two new ways to handle tweet replies

By Anita George May 12, 2022

Replies on the bird app could be getting a makeover, as Twitter is apparently working on two new features that could shape how we respond to tweets.

On Wednesday, Jane Manchun Wong posted screenshots of two different reply-related features that Twitter is building. The first of Wong’s tweets featured a screenshot that showed off an option to “Start a Space about this Tweet.” And the second tweet Wong shared had a screenshot of a new “Pin Reply” feature.

Is quote-tweeting not enough? Twitter is working “Start a Space about this Tweet” so you can talk about it all you want pic.twitter.com/WtGFtpfNZt

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) May 11, 2022

If you’re not familiar, Twitter Spaces is a feature that allows users to host or attend a live audio chat known as a Space. Which means that the “Start a Space about this Tweet” would allow you to host a live audio chat about a given tweet. It is unclear if this option would only be available for one’s own tweets or if it could also be used, as Wong’s tweet and its replies seem to imply, to create an audio version of quote-tweeting other users’ tweets. If Twitter goes through with making this feature available and makes it so that all tweets could be subject to this option, that could indeed make for some intense quote-tweets and ratios. Those Main Character days on the bird app could be a lot louder, literally and figuratively.

Twitter is working on “Pin reply” pic.twitter.com/VGYVT4PmLs

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) May 12, 2022

Twitter is also working on a “Pin Reply” feature, and based on Wong’s screenshots, it looks like it would allow users to pin certain replies to their tweets to the top of the replies section. This one seems pretty useful as it would allow users to pin replies from notable accounts, or replies with helpful information, or ones with particularly entertaining responses, to the top of the replies section so that other users don’t have to scroll forever looking for those responses. And it’s a feature that users are probably already familiar with. This is especially true if they use YouTube or Instagram, both of which offer some form of that option.

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