Are Twitter replies about to become more like Facebook comments? | Apple

Twitter has confirmed it is testing new changes that will make reply threads look and work much more Facebook comment threads.

Sara Haider, Twitter‘s director of product management, tweeted a couple screenshots in order to be transparent about possible changes the platform is developing. The goal, she said, is to make Twitter replies more “conversational”. In the screenshots, you can see that, when she replied back to someone who replied to her tweet, her reply would be neatly nested below, much like a Facebook comment reply.

This new threading solution is, admittedly, easier to read and follow. But did you notice anything else in these screenshots. That’s right, some people had a green dot next to their profile image, indicating their online status. Facebook recently began doing this same thing. It’d be weird to see these rolled out, honestly. We can’t imagine being able to see when Donald Trump is online, for instance.

To be clear, Twitter hasn’t confirmed these changes will actually be officially released. Haider has only said they’re “rough features” for now.

hey Twitter. we’ve been playing with some rough features to make it feel more conversational here. presence and reply threading. still early and iterating on these ideas. thoughts? pic.twitter.com/3U3NvpHWPy

— Sara Haider (@pandemona) August 31, 2018