Twitter is testing a new feature that will allow people to add a status to their tweets, although it's only available to a limited number of people in the United States and Australia.
The new feature will allow Twitter users to "provide more context for your followers," a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “So whether you are about to drop a hot Tweet thread, share your shower thoughts, or have a bad case of the Mondays, your Tweets can better convey what you are up to.”
Notably, users can't enter their own status and instead have to select from a predefined list of options. Those options include "Spoiler Alert" and "Shower thoughts," but we can presumably expect the list to expand as the test progresses.
I don't know how twitter managed to release a more embarrassing and unusable feature than cotweets in the same month but here it is. these are all the statuses you can use. no custom statuses allowed pic.twitter.com/2BPwku1qi1July 27, 2022
One tweet at a time
Twitter says that the new statuses will appear below a user's name and will be attached to a single tweet, meaning these statuses won't roll over from one message to another. It's clear that Twitter intends for these statuses to add color to specific tweets, rather than give people an insight into the user's overall mood — as they might do in apps that offer similar options, like WhatsApp.
While Twitter is one of the best iPhone apps for sharing short form messages with the world, that isn't enough for the social network. It continues to tweak things and add features to compete with other apps and services, including Clubhouse and others. It isn't immediately clear whether this new test will result in a feature that will roll out to the wider user base, but it does seem likely that if it does, it'll be limited to Twitter's own apps.
That, as is often the case, means that those using third-party apps like Tweetbot and Aviary are likely going to be out of luck.
