Twitter will soon let you view quoted tweets, a functionality that Twitter users currently rely on a service named Quoted Replies for. The existence of the feature was first spotted by app reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong last Friday and it is now live for some Twitter users on iOS.
With this addition, Twitter will classify retweets into two categories – with and without comments. There is a neat counter at the top that shows you the number of tweets in these respective categories.
It looks like this! pic.twitter.com/HaVoRMO6T5
— Divia Eden (@diviacaroline) April 21, 2020
The feature can be accessed when you tap on the number of retweets on a tweet. In case you’re unaware, Twitter currently shows just the names of users when you view retweets. Since the feature is currently under testing, we could expect Twitter to rollout the feature in the coming weeks.
The implementation of the feature appears to be slightly different for some Twitter users. In the second case, Twitter app explicitly mentions the number of tweets with comments. On tapping “X Retweets with comments”, Twitter lists the quoted replies. Take a look at the images in the tweet below for a better understanding.
After seeing both of these implementations, I’m personally inclined towards the user interface implemented on the first set of images since it presents all the necessary details in a more straightforward manner.
Since Twitter is unlikely to make a wider rollout of the same feature with different implementations, we will have to wait to see which UI gets finalized. With this addition, users will probably will bid adieu to Quoted Replies, if the feature gets expanded to Android and Twitter web app as well.
Speaking of the web app, Twitter has widely rolled out a collapsible conversation sidebar today so that you can view the media and read the tweet’s replies simultaneously.
