Facebook wants to be Twitter, Twitter wants to be Facebook and now everyone’s thoroughly confused about why their favorite platform is hurtling towards an identity crisis. With the new conversations feature, Twitter will start looking more appealing to the bunch of users who find that the speed at which their timeline is updated makes their eyes bleed.
What’s timeline got to do with it?
Imagine you’re a Facebook user who enjoys the unhurried pace at which your News Feed gets refreshed. You like reading all the comments around a post without having to scroll down past a million other updates that have come up in the time it took you to blink. Twitter’s quickly updating timeline is likely to appear discouraging to new members who see a tweet which gets the conversation rolling and then a few minutes later, poof, it’s gone.
In order to view the retweets or replies that a tweet has generated, you previously had to scroll down to it or visit the Twitter profile of the persons involved in the tweet. The timeline now features vertical blue lines that provide a visual guide to the chronological flow of a conversation presented in its entirety. And every time someone replies to a particular tweet, it shows up in real-time in your stream. This means you can stay updated on something that was tweeted hours ago if people are still jumping into the discussion.
Get it? The idea is to have users engaging with each other and lend more of a social feel to the portal which is mainly known as a micro-blogging site. Of course, if you’re following a group of people who simply cannot stop harping about a topic you’re not particularly interested in, it may be a pain to keep having their debate flood your stream. But we’re pretty sure it won’t be an issue for many. Also, these murmurings of dissatisfaction that are heard in the face of change die over time.
As for the Android and iPhone specials, individual Tweets can now be reported for spam or abuse. Secondly, the Android app has been shaved down to almost half its size so that people using phones with less storage space can download it.