Twitter is an amazing tool for keeping yourself updated on all the latest news and developments around the world. If you follow the right people, they’ll keep you updated with short tweets and longer threads of tweets about the issues they specialize in. Your feed isn’t just made up of tweets and threads by the people you follow, though. When scrolling through your Twitter feed, you’ll also see tweets from people you don’t know, with a small “Liked by…” or “Retweeted by…” at the top of the tweet.
Your Twitter feed will show tweets that have been liked or retweeted by anybody you follow. If you add comments and replies, your comments can be fed back to your network as well. Because of the ease of tweets and threads crossing networks, you may not know anything about who has written the tweet or thread you’re currently reading. Twitter is now moving to change this.
Twitter tests a new Profile Preview feature for mobile
The new feature is designed to address the situation outlined above, particularly relating to long threads of tweets. Should you be reading through an interesting thread and see a comment that catches your eye, the new profile preview feature will allow you to see who made that comment much more easily.
We’re testing an easier way to check out profiles on iOS without leaving your timeline! Simply tap any @ handle in a Tweet, take a peek, follow, and get right back to it. Let us know what you think! pic.twitter.com/dIUFxI2r4C
— Twitter (@Twitter) February 13, 2019
The feature allows you to simply tap on the Twitter user’s @ handle to see a floating preview of their Twitter information. This will include their full bio, follower count, and the date they joined Twitter. Furthermore, the feature will also work on your main feed as well as in comment threads. This means if you see that somebody you follow has retweeted, liked, or commented on a tweet about Nike 110s, you’ll then be able to easily find out that that person has “never had a cavity.”
According to Twitter, the new Profile Preview Feature is being tested first on iOS devices. This means it is likely that the feature will get a roll-out to iPhone users first once the testing phase is over.
This might not be a massive change by Twitter, but it will allow users to stay focused on what they’re reading. At the moment, if you want to see who has said something in a comment thread, you have to click on their @ handle and go to their Twitter homepage. This creates a break in the thread and then there is no guarantee you’ll be returned to the comment you were just reading. As the saying goes, small changes can make big differences.
