Twitter has become an all-time source for recent news and real-time public reactions on the news. With more than 336 million users globally, Twitter has maintained its game in the social media industry by staying relevant. Although despite its large user base, Twitter has been subjected to harsh criticism lately regarding some key issues. In order to fix those issues, the social media giant is looking to launch a new beta app with new features to solve the persisting issues.
Earlier this month, Twitter announced that it wants to gather as much as user’s feedback as possible to understand the problems its users might be facing. The new beta app from the company will be made available to select users. The feedback collected from these users will help Twitter determine which features will make it to the final app and which features will not.
In a conversation with TechCrunch, Twitter’s director of product management, Sara Haider, offered a close look at the company’s new beta app.
Twitter already runs an Experiment Program to test new features as well as to tackle some complicated issues, for example, curb abusive behavior, which helps “diminish abuse” according to CEO Jack Dorsey.
Twitter will make the new app available to only a couple thousand users. The beta testers will not be under the Non-Disclosure Agreement, which means the participants can publicly discuss and tweet about the new beta app, which will allow other non-participants to comment and ask questions about the app.
Interestingly, the new beta app, unlike other betas, where users only test almost complete features before its launch, will take into account the feedback it will receive from the users and decide what features are going to stay and what features are going to be ditched according to the feedback.
The first version of beta will focus on the user interface aspect of the app, the way conversation threads are presented on Twitter. This will include new color schemes and visual cues to highlight important replies.
Some of the features that the beta version will include color-coded replies, algorithmically sorted responses, removing heats and other engagement icons.
The color-coded replies will help users distinguish between responses from the original poster of the tweet, those from following, and those from not following. The algorithmically sorted response feature will align the replies to a tweet in ranked order so users don’t miss out important replies from their friends.
Lastly, Twitter is also going to experiment with the removal of heart/like, retweet and replies button. This could prove to be a bold attempt from the company as it is sure to cause an upheaval in the social media market.
Twitters says that it might not remove the engagement buttons altogether but may choose not to display them for users who do not want them.
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