Twitter Finally Gets Around To Developing A Save-for-later Feature

Twitter is working on a feature that lets you save tweets for later

By Trevor Mogg October 10, 2017

twitter auto crops improve with ai — Twindesign/123RF

A feature that many on Twitter have long been asking for looks like it’s finally heading to the microblogging service.

We’re talking about a bookmarking button that lets you save tweets, whether you want to check them out later or simply store them because they resonated or made you laugh.

At the current time, you probably use one of a variety of methods to save a tweet, including DMing it to yourself or tapping the Like button. But these methods aren’t necessarily convenient — or private. Indeed, some on Twitter lament the fact that their Liked tweets — often with links to articles — can now show up in their followers’ timelines, “inadvertently giving big exposure to things I haven’t read yet,” as one user recently put it.

News of the upcoming feature came directly from Twitter product manager Jesar Shah, who revealed on Monday that an early version had been developed at a recent Hack Week. She even posted a video demonstration (below) showing how it might work, though Shah noted that the prototype was “likely” to change prior to release.

For Hack Week @Twitter we started developing #SaveForLater. Here’s the early prototype that we put together in a week, which is likely to change. pic.twitter.com/c5LekvVF3l

— jesar (@jesarshah) October 9, 2017

In its current form, the feature certainly seems straightforward enough. When you see a tweet you want to save, it’s simply a case of tapping the Options button that appears to the right of the Like button, and then again on the add-to-bookmarks option. When you want to access your saved tweets, just tap on your profile picture and select bookmarks from the drop-down list.

With Twitter never having gotten around to building a save-for-later feature, many users turned to apps like Pocket, which allow you to save links to articles in tweets for offline reading at a later time. But a quick and easy method for saving funny or fascinating content, with or without links, is likely to prove popular with Twitter users who’d prefer to save tweets in a private space, accessible in a couple of taps at any time.

Shah said she wants input from anyone on Twitter interested in helping to develop the feature. “We’ll be tweeting to ask for feedback, and share our thinking as we compare designs, experiment, do research, and more,” she said. But hopefully it won’t be too long before it lands on the service.

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