Twitter has been known to be a microbogging site from the start, but people on the platform have a lot to say, resulting in long threads that eventually need to be unrolled by external apps to be shared as a whole. Although tweeple developed their own narrative building technique to circumvent the platform’s word limit, many have wished to share more content in a single tweet. While blue ticked users, advertisers and sacked employees may not be able to see a silver lining in Musk’s Twitter takeover, his move to allow long-form content on the site may please aspiring authors, bloggers and readers.
No more screenshots
The new social media honcho Musk has announced that he plans to get rid of screenshots from notepad or other platforms, which have so far been used to share long form content via tweets. When asked if it will be a roll out of Twitters Notes feature, he responded by saying that the upgrade will be something similar to it. Musk was referring to the Notes feature which was introduced for select users across the globe, months ahead of the change in leadership.
What can authors do with Notes?
It was available for authors on the platform, who could add a Notes tab to their profile, in order to redirect their followers towards their published work or long-form articles. Rich formatting tools and the ability to add GIFs, images and videos to articles were also provided to users of the Note feature, apart from the ability to tweet their long-form content. The aim was to allow people to share more indepth content and opinions, without having to set up a separate website or blog to be promoted via tweets.
Monetisation of content in store
What Musk plans to do is allow users to attach longer text to tweets, and facilitate monetisation by allowing followers to subscribe to such content or donate to authors throughTwitter. At the same time he didn’t share how similar it will be to Notes, since most of it was announced in Musk’s typical cryptic tweets. Apart from that he also mocked Twitter’s search option to a platform from the 90s, and added that his team will be upgrading it.
The news comes at a time when Twitter’s rival Facebook, which offers space for longer posts, started losing active users for the first time this year, and also suffered ad revenue loss.
