For a long time now people on Twitter have been using tweetstorms to express longer thoughts or to connect to certain topics that are discussed on the social network. This was a way to get past the Twitter’s social character limitation. A while ago, Twitter has doubled the character limit, making it 280. These days, Twitter launches threads, a new way of engaging in longer stories across the platform. They have been testing this new feature for a while and now it is available both on iOS and Android.
Even from its beginnings, Twitter has listened to its users’ needs and improved functionalities based on their behavior: the RT, the reply button and now the threads.
How do I use the new Threads feature from Twitter?
The threads feature is pretty straight-forward and easy to use: when you post a new tweet and want to link it to a longer story, you just have to press the “+” in the composer screen and start your series of tweets. Each line in the thread represents a tweet with a 280 character limit. Of course, just like the normal tweets, the ones in threads can contain media such as photos, GIFs, videos and even more. After you are done writing the tweets, you just have to tap into the space below it and continue tweeting in the thread.
While your tweets are still in draft, you can edit them at any time. When you have finished writing them and want to spread the thread in the world, you have to tap the “Tweet all” button. The tweets will appear in chronological order, but not all at the same time, to give users time to read them.
You can add new tweets to the thread at any time, even if it was already posted. To do so, you have to press the “Add a new tweet” button and write the new one. For now, there is a limit of 25 tweets in a thread, but, after the users’ feedback, this limit might change.
If you are worried you will see only threads in your Twitter newsfeed from now on, losing the essence of the app – short messages that are easy to read -, there is no need to worry: Twitter will only show two or three tweets in a thread. If there are more and you would like to read them all, there is a “Show this thread” button that you can click on and see all the tweets within the thread.
The update is currently rolling out on iOS, Android, and web, reaching the whole Twitter community across the world soon enough.
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