With Instagram Stories staying so popular, there is no doubt that other social media platforms would want to hop on the same train.
Facebook tried it, Whatsapp tried, and now all eyes are turned to Twitter which is arguably as popular as Instagram.
Twitter’s Head of Product Kavyon Beykpour even noted how important ephemerality is in a podcast interview with The Verge.
“It is really important for some specific sets of circumstances where you want to talk to people, but you’re not quite sure you want it to last forever yet,” Beykpour says.
The only problem is that Twitter users have a much stronger reaction than on other platforms and may discourage people to use stories.
Twitter product designer Brittany Forks (@brittanyforks) tweeted a poll to see if people would prefer to select their audience and who is able to leave comments instead.
if you could *hypothetically* Tweet to a selected audience, who would you want to see and reply to your Tweet?
— brittany (@brittanyforks) October 15, 2019
It’s kind of like choosing a close friends list on Instagram but with tweets instead.
The poll received mixed replies on Twitter with some saying that it would help in making conversations private and others saying it disregards the whole point of Twitter which is a public discussion platform.
THIS IS SOMETHING I DESPERATELY WANT. I want to be able to tweet to circles like 'IRL friends' or 'PF' with view/reply options. Sometimes I want to tweet with replies disabled, too, like for personal news!
— Owen Williams (@ow) October 15, 2019
Please don't do this, it sounds like a great way to reinforce echo chambers. Twitter's best as a public discourse mechanism, lean into that. It's not trying to compete with Snapchat or Instagram and no one's asking it to.
— Zac Sweers (@ZacSweers) October 15, 2019
“It’s actually quite difficult to have a fireside chat when you have a billion people screaming into your ear. Like imagine we had tens of thousands of people in the studio with us right now, talking into our ear while we were talking to each other,” says Kavyyon Beykpour.
Beykpour said they’re still trying to figure out a way to fix this problem but for now there is nothing confirmed yet.
What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below.
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