Twitter knows that it needs to change its user experience in order to make sure that more people sign up for it. This is because Twitter is very confusing for a newbie (if they come from a network like Instagram or Facebook) since it has its own idiosyncratic features like retweet, mention, handle, favourite (now likes), timeline and the likes.
Back in February, Twitter had made plans to make sure that it is less confusing for majority of their audience. “First, Twitter is an iconic service and a globally recognized brand,” they said on their shareholder letter, “we are going to fix the broken windows and confusing parts, like the .@name syntax and @reply rules, that we know inhibit usage and drive people away.”
It seems now they are fixing the @reply rules with a whole new system that is quite odd.
In the current system, when you reply to a person, their Twitter handle is displayed before your tweet. It made sense since your reply is directly to that person but in this new system shown on the beta is kinda off.
When you send a tweet as a reply to a person, it initially looks like you’re just sending a normal tweet to the timeline. However, when you look closely at my reply, it clearly shows (in small letters) that this is a reply which indicates the name of the person (not the handle). This is a really unsettling update for a person like me who has used Twitter for the last 7 years but from a new user perspective, they would get used to the system quite easily.
The other change is the new “My Moments” tab that has been added on the options menu on the app. This is where you can view the Moments you have created which was made possible by a recent update by the company. However, you cannot create Moments from the app yet and this seems to be restricted to twitter.com
These changes can be seen on Twitter for Android version 6.20.0-beta.512
