A lot has been happening with Twitter recently. Actually, there’s always a bunch happening with Twitter. But since it’s such a insane flow of constant information, and we’re programmed to check in, tweet, retweet, favorite, and maybe read a few things, at the speed of light, you may have missed some recent changes.
Here are a few new things you may want to check out.
1. Abuse Policy Update
Twitter just updated their policies on abusive behavior and I love it, because I hate negativity. As I’m sure you know, Twitter (and all social media) is all too commonly used by people to harass or even bully others. The latest update to their policies essentially tightens Twitter’s focus on preventing, and lessens their tolerance to, threatening tweets or those that may suggest or even promote violence against someone. They also say their support team may choose to freeze accounts, demand a tweet be deleted, or require additional verification for logging in, when an account displays such activity.
While we’ll most likely never completely rid Twitter of this type of abuse, and the behavior of some people will never change, this is definitely an important update that I hope will drive some of the negativity away from my favorite social site.
2. New Homepage Design
So you may remember always being nudged to sign up or sign in to Twitter anytime you visited the site without being logged in. Well, that’s changed a little. Now, when you visit without being automatically logged in, you’ll see “what’s happening right now” on Twitter. In other words, you’re going to see everything that Twitter has to offer. All the different types of celebrities and sports teams who are on the platform, as well as, the wide variety of content that is consistently published every day; business news, cool new trends in tech, world happenings, and pop culture gossip.
If you’re like me, you’re always connected and you’re probably always logged in. So you may not notice, or even care about this small update. But Twitter has definitely changed its tactic for getting people involved. They want to show you (and potential new users) all the possibilities, and they want people to be drawn to the platform, rather than begging for new users to sign up.
Again, I’m always logged in, so I never see this. So why do I care about it? Well, Twitter is no longer begging people to join. Instead, they’re appealing to those users who are looking for more content and wanting to be engaged and connected. This is great news for us social media marketing folks. The more content-driven users they have, the more opportunities we have to connect, engage, and ultimately convert those users to followers, fans, partners, and customers.
3. Direct Messages to and From Anyone
So, it used to be that if someone wanted to send you a direct message, they had to follow you and you had to follow them. Now, you can send DMs without being connected. I both love and hate this one at the same time. While I like the ability to send direct messages to someone I don’t follow (and who doesn’t follow me), and I love the fact that a customer or client with an issue can send that complaint privately, (instead of publicly for the world to see), this also opens a door for unwanted messages that may have nothing to do with your business.
You may have already noticed a bit of additional spam coming your way via Direct Messages, I know I have. If you want to avoid this, check your privacy settings and you can select to not receive messages from people you don’t follow.
- It’s under Settings>Security and Privacy.
- Just check or uncheck the “Receive Direct Messages from anyone” box.
If you’re a business, I recommend checking the box and allowing Direct Messages from anyone. I’d much rather receive that customer complaint in private, and I think you’ll agree that handling a complaint via messages is easier than tweeting back and forth.
4. Updated Retweets
This is a subtle, but very cool change to the way we retweet other user’s content. If you recall, on the desktop version of twitter, we used to only be able to directly retweet a post. Or we would have to copy and paste that content into a new tweet.
With this new update, we now have the choice to directly retweet, or retweet with an added comment. So now, instead of deleting half the original tweet so you could fit in your own thoughts or make it fit your personality, you can retweet the original, in its original form, with your own words attached as a comment.
As Twitter continues to grow and mature, I hope they’ll continue releasing these little updates that help us enjoy the platform more, connect with others more easily, and continue to utilize all the marketing opportunities it has to offer.
What do you think of the most recent updates? Let me know your thoughts in the comments, or tweet @enimultimedia.
