Twitter Updates You Need to Know About

Twitter has decided to switch off millions of accounts linked to SMS services. In fact, popular Twitter accounts with a million or more followers may see a drop of 8-10% in their total audience due to the ax of SMS service. 

Twitter announced the vulnerabilities linked to SMS and have since decided to purge the accounts altogether. The privacy concern is linked to a method of swapping SIM cards and even the company’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, was hacked via an SMS-connected system. 

SMS tweets are not commonly used by the majority of Twitter users, therefore the impact is expected to be minimal. However, the implications for users in developing countries may prove to be much larger as SMS service is far more prevalent in these regions

Searching for old comments of Twitter can be, well, impossible. Luckily, the platform has recognized this downfall and has implemented a listing specifically for ‘Retweets with Comments’ – on iOS at least. 

The newest listing feature no longer considers retweets with comments to be a unique tweet, which previously excluded comments from the total retweet count. Instead, listings now include two separate categories to make finding comments easier than ever before. 

Furthermore, the additional retweets added to the total tweet count may boost many users’ engagement status. If you’re an Android user, don’t worry! This listing feature is being tested on Android devices as well and should be rolled out before the end of the year. 

Twitter Updates In

Twitter

Limiting the number of accounts users can follow to fight platform manipulation

Follow, unfollow, follow, unfollow. Who does that? Spammers. So we’re changing the number of accounts you can follow each day from 1,000 to 400. Don’t worry, you’ll be just fine.

Twitter has already taken some steps to prevent follow churn by banning several social media apps which enable it from the platform. Now they are going even further and limiting the number of users one can follow to 400 a day. 

As it says in the official tweet, this is done in order to fight spammers who often use manipulative tactics to gain more followers: they mass-follow people, wait till they follow in response, and then unfollow them. Or worse, they keep following and unfollowing so you get spammed with notifications. 

However, some people still think that 400 people a day is still too many. I wonder if there will be more actions and stricter limits to fight spamming in the future.