Remember that AIM away message-like status feature Twitter was spotted working on a few months back? It looks a bit different now and is finally being tested with some Twitter users. Based on screenshots we’ve seen shared on Twitter, it looks less like AIM and more like Facebook’s “How are you feeling?” statuses.
On Wednesday afternoon, TechCrunch reported that there were Twitter users “reporting that they can now post Twitter statuses, which lets them tag posts like they’re retro MySpace moods.”
here are all the twitter status options btw pic.twitter.com/wKacMqHxSy
— kelsey weekman (@kelsaywhat) July 27, 2022
TechCrunch confirmed the testing of the new status feature with Twitter:
“’For a limited time, we are testing a feature that allows you to add a status topic from a predetermined list to your Tweets to provide more context for your followers,’ Twitter told TechCrunch.”
Essentially, those who have access to the new Status feature will now be able to tag their tweets with a “status topic” — which, based on the screenshots shared by Twitter users, looks kind of like mood/purpose categories for your tweets.
BuzzFeed reporter Kelsey Weekman tweeted a screenshot of the various pre-set “status options” users can currently choose from, including “Hot take,” “Need advice,” and “Spoiler alert.” According to the screenshot, each status option comes with a related emoji.
Twitter also confirmed to TechCrunch that the test for this feature is only for “a limited time” for just some users “in the U.S. and Australia.”
Even if you don’t have the ability to tag your tweets with a status, you can still view tweets with statuses on Twitter. Clicking on these status tags seems to pull up other tweets that contain words that match the status tag. For example, if you click on a “Hot take” tag, you’ll likely see other tweets with the words “hot take” in them.
Whether or not this status feature will bring some useful context to our tweets is still up in the air, but we are interested to see where this feature will affect conversations on Twitter going forward.
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