Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter 2.0’ is rapidly appearing like Twitter 1.0 with small adjustments, including components like tweet view counts, up and downvotes, and subscriptions all tried in the past and abandoned owing to no big value. But that doesn’t mean they were correct, and Elon and his new team may be able to revive these old ideas, repackage them, and sell them as add-ons.
Elon may add twitter replies to the mix. Twitter has attempted this before. The most recent tweet responses experiment was in March 2015, when Twitter asked for user opinion on adding additional emoji to the Like ‘heart’ mark. That’s logical. Reactions have become a common response option in social and messaging applications. Twitter already provides responses in DMs, in addition to the solitary ‘heart’ answer in tweets. Let’s face it, a ‘heart’ isn’t appropriate in many scenarios, so tweet replies could make sense, despite being shelved repeatedly by the previous Twitter team.
Most of Elon’s tweet suggestions have already been implemented. Most intriguing will be if the response set contains ‘thumbs up’ and ‘thumbs down’ alternatives, like Twitter DMs. Also a possible reaction and ranking factor.
Musk has suggested that Twitter may include additional user reaction choices into tweet ranking, with mute and hide actions limiting tweet and user reach. If Musk wants Twitter to be a genuine mirror of the people’s voice, he should include direct feedback response signals. Twitter’s main feed refreshes in real-time, so you can’t always rank tweets by user votes. It might be a method for Musk to get more input on what customers want and don’t want to see on the app. It’s something to contemplate. If Elon and co. release it.
