What you need to know
- At a recent press briefing, Twitter provided updates on several new initiatives aimed at helping creators, communities, and general users.
- Recording and replays are coming to Spaces, and the new Communities feature is being tested.
- The option to tip creators is rolling out globally, and users can choose to tip in Bitcoin for the first time ever.
- Twitter also unveiled new safety and community moderation tools.
At a recent press event, social media giant Twitter unveiled a host of new product features, updates to its existing services, and a roadmap for when new initiatives will be rolling out to creators and consumers. These features include tools to help creators better manage and monetize their communities, as well as tools for regular Twitter users to feel safer and more comfortable while using the platform on their Android phones or other devices.
Two of Twitter's most popular and newest features are getting some updates over the coming months, including Spaces and Communities. Spaces is gaining the ability for creators to record an event so that followers can replay it at their convenience. Twitter is also improving the discovery of Spaces and providing ways for creators to set prices and audience sizes for Ticketed Spaces events. Additionally, Twitter has developed a program to help cretors learn how to best promote and monetize their Spaces events.
The Twitter Communities feature was introduced in early September with select test communities, and more will be rolling out "in the future."
In addition to Ticketed Spaces, creators are getting even more tools to monetize and manage their followers. For example, Twitter recently announced it's testing a Super Followers feature with a small group of creators, allowing them to charge participating followers a monthly subscription for additional access to exclusive and behind-the-scenes content.
Perhaps most exciting, Twitter is rolling out its Tips feature globally, allowing users to support their favorite creators directly from the app. Additional payment services such as GoFundMe, Cash App, Patreon, and Venmo have also been added, and followers now have the ability to tip in Bitcoin. The company also announced that it would be introducing a monetization dashboard for creators.
Finally, Twitter announced that it is continuing to test a new Safety Mode feature that will auto-block accounts similar to ones that a user may have already blocked. In addition, moderation is coming to Communities, including a new Heads Up feature that lets you know who's in a room before drop-in so that you feel as safe as possible joining a conversation.
Twitter is also testing the ability for its AI to help users spot automated accounts or bots more easily and the ability for users to filter out certain words for phrases from conversations they're engaged in before they see the replies. Finally, users will soon be able to remove themselves from conversations or threads in which they've been @mentioned in a way that won't alert the others in the conversation that you've left.
All of these updates are rolling out now or in the coming months, and follow recent feature updates like scaling photos and tweet reactions.
