Twitter has been spotted testing a tweetstorm feature built into its own app.
When you have a message to get out that exceeds the 140 character limit, chaining multiple tweets together has become known as a “tweetstorm.”
WOAH! Twitter has a hidden tweet storm feature!
h/t Devesh Logendran pic.twitter.com/QpDLhKnAZZ
— Matt Navarra ⭐️ (@MattNavarra) September 10, 2017
Twitter is recognizing people are finding a way to subvert the 140 character limit, and are responding by making tweetstorm easier to create for everyone.
Tweetstorms have been a popular feature for years, but doing it correctly involves some careful planning.
You need write your entire message beforehand, chop it up into 140 character parts, and quickly publish each tweet in rapid succession.
This new feature makes tweetstorms easier to compose. First, you’re creating the entire message within Twitter itself. From the looks of it, the app chops up the tweets as you’re writing.
When done, Twitter will then publish the message in the appropriate order.
Twitter has historically been effective at monitoring how people are using its network, and often turning unintended uses into legitimate features.
One of the greatest example of this are hashtags. Twitter wasn’t developed with hashtags in mind, they’re something early Twitter users would include in their tweets as a way of indexing them.
Tweetstorms were not an intended use of Twitter either, but it’s possible they will be built into the app one day.
This feature, which refers to tweetstorms as “threads”, is not available outside of limited testing. There’s no indication if it ever will be, and Twitter has refused to comment on it.
