Twitter has revealed in a tweet that it is developing a new long-form blogging feature called Twitter Notes. According to the platform, the feature is presently available to a limited number of users in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Ghana, and that people “in most countries” can read Notes on and off Twitter.
Twitter demonstrated the feature in two separate GIFs. Users can begin composing a Note by clicking the “Write” option, and when finished, they can embed the Note into their tweet. Several writers have already published Notes on the site, which appear as long-form essays with tweets, videos, and photographs interspersed.
Jane Manchun Wong, an app researcher, released images of a feature called Twitter Notes in some places and Twitter Articles in others in May. It allowed users to create prepared blog posts with images, links, and embedded tweets.
Another app researcher, Nima Owji, published further screenshots of the same utility in April, showing choices for users to share content with their followers or create standalone links for posts to share elsewhere on the web.
The addition of long-form writing to Twitter might radically alter the platform’s nature, which has always been defined by short-form writing – at first, tweets were just 140 characters in length, before doubling to 280 characters in 2017.
Twitter, on the other hand, is arguably already full with lengthy written screeds, either in the form of tweet threads or tweeted screenshots of other people’s articles or users’ own writing.
Twitter may possibly capture more of the value of these messages by introducing long-form writing into its platform. Directly posting articles or notes to Twitter makes the text indexable for marketing and search purposes. It might also complement the company’s new Newsletters feature.
Twitter purchased newsletter provider Revue in 2021 to compete with Substack, and has since integrated Revue newsletters into users’ Twitter profiles. However, the feature does not appear to have gained widespread acceptance.
