Obscure Twitter Features That Died in A/B Testing

Social media companies love testing new features and redesigns with small amounts of users before releasing them to everyone. This allows companies to gain feedback to optimize features, improve them, or decide releasing to all users isn't worth it. Before Elon Musk purchased Twitter and took over, there were tons of fun features that Twitter never released to everyone or became lost in obscurity. I find these features really fascinating, and I want to go over them, because I miss this era of Twitter so much.

I want to give a shoutout to Jane Manchun Wong, who is the reason we know about most of these. She used to post all sorts of new features Twitter was testing, and is the reason most people know these features even exist.

TikTok Style Explore Page

For a few months, Twitter was testing replacing the explore page with an immersive infinitely scrolling feed^[1], similar to TikTok. The unique thing was that not only would this feed show videos, but also images and plain text Tweets too. The old explore page could be seen by going to the trending page, although the tabs separating topics were gone.

I was apart of this experiment, and while the whole thing was strange it felt like Twitter. I thought the look for text only Tweets would be cool for screenshots at least. If this became available to everyone, I do think there would've been more outrage. This was at the peak of the TikTok fatigue, where every social network had a TikTok styled feed.

This feature wasn't entirely scrapped. Instead, it was reworked into the immersive video player, which allows scrolling from video to video in a similar way, although it doesn't show images or text-only Tweets. Additionally, a "videos for you" carousel was added to the explore page, and now there's a video tab on mobile.

Fleets

Twitter used to have their own version of stories called Fleets (portamento of fleeting Tweets). Fleets were a feature from November 2020 to July 2021. I remember everyone hating the feature at first, but slowly growing to like it near the second half of their short existence. Out of everything in this article, Fleets are the weirdest one that was actually implemented for everyone. Fleets had a really interesting evolution.

Early Fleets

Fleets were originally tested for users in Brazil on March 4, 2020^[2], with Twitter making a blog post announcing the new feature. This early version of Fleets featured a more compact design, with Fleets appearing as thought bubbles on the home screen instead of the generic blue circle.

This early version of Fleets had each post appear vertically and look less like every Fleet was an image. Most of the standard Tweet options would be available for Fleets: text, photo, GIF. Additionally, the background featured a constantly moving multicolored gradient, something that felt really out of place for Twitter.

Here's a video of Fleets in action:

I know what you're thinking: “THIS SOUNDS A LOT LIKE STORIES!”. Yes, there are many similarities with the Stories format that will feel familiar to people. There are also a few intentional differences to make the experience more focused on sharing and seeing people’s thoughts. pic.twitter.com/OaGYZpChcN

— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) March 4, 2020

I honestly prefer this version of Fleets from the final. Although it doesn't feel like something Twitter made, it still looks unique. The text posts actually look like text posts, unlike the final version which looks like a budget Instagram create mode.

Global Release

On November 17, 2020, Twitter released Fleets worldwide. The final design was near identical to Instagram stories. Vertical scrolling was dropped for image by image viewing. Text posts would be on a selectable gradient background, similar to Instagram's create mode. Some other additional nice features were added, such as the ability to share Tweets to Fleets. This could be used as a silent Retweet.

Later on, more features were added to Fleets, such as animated stickers. Although not the first time they were teased, the new emoji stickers were one of the first public usages of the new Twimoji. Near the end of Fleet's lifetime, I remember seeing a carousel of people who shared a Tweet to their Fleets under Tweets. I found an old screenshot of it:

Discontinuation

On July 14, 2021 Twitter announced Fleets would be removed. The reason was because Fleets were created to encourage more people to Tweet, but only people who already were Tweeting were using Fleets. So it was essentially a failure of a feature.

We hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter. But, in the time since we introduced Fleets to everyone, we haven’t seen an increase in the number of new people joining the conversation with Fleets like we hoped.

I still miss Fleets. There is so much more I want to say about Fleets, however I think most people who used Twitter around that time at least have some memory of Fleets. Maybe in the future.

Updated Media Editor

One (useful) thing did come out of Fleets, at least for a little while: an updated media editor. Basically, Twitter took the media editor from Fleets and used it for images^[3]. This gave some additional new features like text, new stickers, and letter boxing.

For some reason this feature got reverted. My best guess is the lack of emoji stickers. A lot of users on Twitter overlay the minus emoji to redact information in images. Although this new image editor had stickers dedicated for redaction, they were too stylized. For instance, I remember there was one that was a collage of colored squares, and another that was a black circle with a crossed out eye inside of it.

Speaking of stickers...

#stickers

When Twitter added stickers in 2016 they had an interesting utility: stickers functioned as hashtags. Tapping a sticker you saw on your timeline would take you to a search of other people who used that same sticker.

At some point this feature was removed. My best guess is because people don't add sticker masks over the faces of their friends anymore. The only times people use stickers now are for redaction and making healing memes.

Sadly, last month Twitter replaced the photo editor, removing stickers in the process entirely. Oh well.

News Camera

This one feels really out of place. Tweets taken using the Twitter camera would be given a special presentation^[4], where the caption would overlay the image or video. A location could also be attached, and the background color of the caption could be changed to a few preset colors.

On desktop, these Tweets even had their own detail view, with the image or video being consistently on the side of the screen. This was in 2019, before media on desktop had the sidebar.

This feature was really confusing to me when I first began using the Twitter app. It was one of those quirks you forget was a thing. The whole thing was confusing. Why should Tweets with the Twitter camera have special rendering?

Currently all of these Tweets render like any other Tweet, as the news camera has been replaced with a generic camera where the most exciting feature is shutter.

Tweet Feedback

Historically, likes and Retweets have been the only feedback types available for Tweets. However, Twitter has experimented multiple times with other types of reactions and feedback for Tweets.

Emoji Reactions

In 2015, it appears Twitter experimented with having emoji reactions to Tweets^[5]. However, it appears this experiment ended up going nowhere. They were never counted, and quickly ended up removed. This was a few weeks after the like button changed from a star to a heart.

However, in 2021 Twitter began experimenting with reactions on Tweets once again, this time with a much more limited emoji palette:

• Like
• Cheer
• Hmm
• Sad
• Haha

Cheer and sad both use heart emoji as placeholders. Similar to Facebook, reactions could be accessed by hovering over the like button and selecting a reaction. Reactions would appear above Tweet engagement counters.

Twitter is working on Tweet Reactions picker https://t.co/CZx2szYusI pic.twitter.com/HSzO5tLVoP

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) June 15, 2021

A really interesting thing is that feedback surveys shared by Twitter played with the idea of also having negative reactions^[6]. These would be unique, as they would be counted separately from likes.

The way this worked was similar to the next feature.

Downvotes

In July of 2021, Twitter began testing downvotes for everyone^[7]. Unlike the name suggests, downvoting a Tweet didn't actually decrease the like count, or any count. And unlike the negative reaction feature just discussed, downvotes were only for replies to Tweets; a top level Tweet couldn't be downvoted. Additionally, nobody could see a downvote count. They existed only to gather internal feedback on the type of replies that people like and don't.

Downvotes had 3 different styles that were in testing:

• Green upvote replacing likes and a orange downvote
• Standard like button and an orange downvote (some tests had the downvote in a circle, while others had it appear similar to a Reddit downvote)
• Green thumb up button and an orange thumb down button

Downvotes suddenly vanished one day without warning, and I don't think anybody was surprised or missed the feature, considering it did nothing visible to users other than play a cool animation.

Threaded Replies

The way Twitter handles replies is one of the most iconic things about the platform. It makes following conversations really easy, and especially screenshotting them too. However, in 2019 Twitter made a new app called "twttr" (the name a reference to the original name for Twitter) to test what's likely the most radical change to replies ever.

Reply Threading

I'm aware this heading is the same as the last but with the words swapped.

This one is a lot to take in, so I'm going to show you the images first and tell you about it after.

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 beykpour (@pandemona) August 31, 2018

If you think this is ugly, don't worry, its supposed to be, for some reason. The colors were designed to be "overly saturated."

Instead of Tweets appearing in a straight line showing one conversation at a time, Tweets would now be threaded together, similar to Reddit. Additionally, replies would be placed inside a speech bubble. Perhaps the most jarring change is the removal of the engagement buttons. They wouldn't be completely gone forever, just until you tap a reply. The keyboard would open automatically, but from there you could also like or Retweet. A swipe gesture was also added to quickly like Tweets by sliding on them.

You might of noticed how some replies have a background color. This would signify the following things:

• Blue is a reply you made
• Purple is a reply from the author of the Tweet
• Green is a reply from someone you follow

Public Beta Test

When members of the general public were finally given access to the twttr app this was cleaned up a bit^[8]. While replies still had that ugly speech bubble shape, at least they were no longer colored in completely.

Now, replies from people you follow would have a blue line to the left of them, while replies from the original Tweet author would have a black line. Additionally, it appears that no indentation was used if there were no other replies to a single reply, similar to how they work now. That was a really hard sentence to follow.

Thankfully, this layout never made it to the final version of Twitter. However, all of the ideas from it were tested individually at some point.

Author Context Labels

Taking inspiration from the color coding used in the redesign, Twitter added badges next to relevant people in replies^[9]. These were specifically for the Tweet author, anyone mentioned in the top level Tweet, and people you follow.

Eventually, these would be condensed into icons that appeared over profile pictures^[9:1]. I feel this is actually more confusing than the labels. They're harder to recognize at a glance, and do you expect the average person to know what a microphone means?

Later on, the only label that would appear is "Original Author." And now, no labels appear. Wonderful!

Conversation View

Twitter really liked Reddit style threaded replies, because they kept experimenting with them. At first, if multiple people you followed replied to the same Tweet, it would show all of their replies on your timeline^[10] in a new look:

This was just the beginning. A new reply section had already been being tested internally since 2019. This took the things learned from the old twttr beta and worked to actually make them feel like Twitter. In May 2020, Twitter began testing this new reply layout on iOS and the web^[11]. The result?

I'm going to say it, I actually really liked this layout. Not everyone had the engagement buttons hidden, so maybe that's why I enjoyed it. But it was so much easier to follow conversations, especially compared to the previous test. I LOVE THREADS CONNECTED WITH LINES THAT HAVE INDENTING AHHHHHH!! There was also a version with the icons from the previous design. I sure hope the next paragraph isn't about how Twitter disabled this due to user feedback, including a blockquote from the @TwitterSupport account.

In December of 2020, Twitter announced they would be discontinuing this layout:

We asked and you let us know this reply layout wasn’t it, as it was harder to read and join conversations. So we’ve turned off this format to work on other ways to improve conversations on Twitter.^[12]

Not only that, but the twttr app was also discontinued. So I think it's safe to say that Twitter was officially done with threaded replies. It was fun while it lasted.

I still think there should be an option to switch between the reply styles. And don't tell me they won't add this because of technical debt, because you can browse jobs on Twitter now. It seems like something that would be added to Twitter Blue in the early days of the subscription.

Timeline

I'm genuinely struggling to come up with something to write here that doesn't sound like text made to search engine optimize this article. At the same time, I don't like putting a heading down and immediately throwing down another heading.

Edge-to-edge

Have you ever wanted your timeline to look like Instagram? In September 2021, Twitter announced a new edge-to-edge timeline, which looked like Instagram. Images are bigger, everything is a little less compact, and I remember everyone complaining that the size of the engagement buttons was slightly larger than Tweet font size. This was back before Elon made the font size of Tweets really small on the Tweet detail page.

I genuinely have no thoughts on this other than it looks different. The increased image sizes seem cool, but at the same time I fear they would've introduced cropping issues (this update came shortly after Twitter made it so images weren't automatically cropped to be super short on the timeline). Additionally, it seems like they would make replies hard to follow due to the lack of lines connecting people talking.

Two Column

I'm trying so hard to find any evidence this ever even existed, but I just can't. I know it did, and I even took a screenshot of it at one point, I can't find it. It was during Elon Musk, and basically it looked like the Tumblr search result page, but with Tweets and only 2 columns of them. You will only be alive for so long and you can never get the time you spent back. Also because its Elon musk there were no engagement buttons, but the view count would still appear in the top right corner of each Tweet.

the bad one elon wanted

Elon Musk wanted to remove the engagement buttons from the timeline. Because its Elon Musk, the view count would still be displayed as a badge in the top right of each Tweet. To interact with Tweets, you would hold on them and a bunch of options would appear in a menu, similar to the Pinterest long press menu.

This version of the Twitter interface without the engagement buttons does exist in the current Twitter app, although its missing the menu that makes it not cumbersome to use. I'm not going to tell you how to enable it because it is stupid. I would also like to quit talking about things built while Elon Musk was at Twitter.

Icebreakers

If you've ever been really desperate to talk about something but not desperate enough to find people to talk about it with, icebreakers are the perfect feature for you. An icebreaker could be pinned to your profile, and people could reply to it, just like a Tweet. When you're online, your icebreaker would also appear in a page for people who want to talk^[13]. It also appeared that icebreakers would begin with prompts chosen by Twitter, each with an associated emoji for them.

This was simply a concept idea shared internally that never even got prototyped. I don't understand what the point of the feature is, or how it works. Considering I found it in an article about Twitter trying to promote positivity, I'm guessing the entire feature would be firing shots in the air to keep the rent low, or in this case pretend there are normal people on Twitter.

Quote Tweet with Reaction

SpaceGhostPurrp would probably use this feature^[14].

Status

Twitter at one point toyed with the idea of having online indicators^[13:1]. But not only this, you could add an account status. This would appear along with your Tweets, and the cool thing would be that search Tweets based on statuses, and any status with a hashtag would cause Tweets posted during that status to automatically included in that hashtag. This could be very useful for livetweeting.

Look at the raw 2018 optimism in this image. Don't call it woke, because that's not what woke means.

Where in a Tweet the status would appear, I have no idea. This image is simply a mockup crated by Twitter designers.

Vibes

Vibes were an early prototype of the same feature I just discussed, but instead using a glitter gradient background because its 2022. Also a profile and a Tweet could both have a status, but that was probably because this was still an in progress feature and not for production yet.

#Twitter keeps working on the Status feature 👀 pic.twitter.com/BSGf2SAHYR

— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) April 8, 2022

Its hard to discuss the functions of a feature that wasn't completely implemented yet, only prototypes of it. It would be cool if this became a real feature that people could actually use.

Tweet Status

Wow.

How this feature worked was you could set a status from a list of preset ones made by Twitter^[15]. These would constantly rotate, so if you're not feeling "🏖️Vacation mode" you better get into it before you can never get into it again. These statuses would appear under your name on a Tweet, and if you tapped the status you could see other Tweets with the same status. A status had to be set for each Tweet individually, and the whole thing was useless.

While this feature was released, not everyone got access to it. It was one of the unfortunate final experimental features before Elon took over, so it mysteriously vanished one day. But honestly, did anybody notice? That wasn't a rhetorical question, please fill out the Google Form.

Facets

Circles would be an awesome feature if it was on a platform that wasn't Google+. At one point Twitter debated copying them, which I really wish they did. Facets would allow you to post to different "personas," all on the same account. The cool thing is that each facet could be set to either be available for anyone to follow, for people to request to follow, or to only allow people you accept onto it. Each facet would also have its own profile picture and display name, which is cool on the profile, but could be confusing on the timeline, especially when it comes to retweeting public facets.

Here's another approach, embracing an obvious truth: we’re different people in different contexts (w/ friends, fam, work, public)

Facets, an early idea, lets you Tweet from distinct personas within 1 acct. Others can follow the whole acct … or just Facets they're interested in. pic.twitter.com/URt5UXeoa1

— Quarter (@onefovrth) July 1, 2021

This later was simplified into Trusted Friends, which became Circles. Other than the name being different, Trusted Friends also allowed you to have a feed of just people you added to your Trusted Friends list, and Tweets from Trusted Friends would be prioritized on your timeline. Basically it would work exactly like Instagram's Close Friends list.

I still miss circles.

Thanks for the gold, kind tweep!

For those unaware, a "tweep" was what Twitter wanted people to call Twitter users. Its a portamento of "Twitter" and "peep."

Twitter monetization sucks. While I believe creatives should get paid for their work, most people who are monetized either run meme pages, content farms, or engagement bait. Twitter has always been a good platform for increasing your presence on other platforms, so monetization is a weird choice. Monetization is currently based on engagements you get under your Tweets. However, there was a different monetization that was being prototyped: Reddit awards.

Here’s the list of Twitter Awards: https://t.co/PpgHebBWD6 pic.twitter.com/BePDVAkzhy

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) January 5, 2023

Honestly, I would've loved this idea much better. From an ironic standpoint, its just really funny. Plus, nobody is giving awards to Tweets that made them angry. I hope. The only thing I would hate about awards is I know Elon Musk would add a Cybertruck and Doge award.

Thank you so much for reading this article. I love looking at obscure features of things, so when I fell down a rabbit hole of Twitter features I knew I had to write an article about them. This is almost 3x as long as my previous longest article, and it took me multiple days to write this, and I did so much research, so I really hope you enjoyed it.

There are a ton of smaller features I found that I didn't mention here that might be interesting in a follow up article. I have 160 tabs open currently just related to Twitter features. However I didn't want to spend so long writing this that I got distracted and ended up forgetting to write the rest of the article.