Micro-blogging platform Twitter has rolled out a new feature that enables users to see the number of people that viewed their Tweets.
The company’s CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter, “Twitter is rolling out View Count, so you can see how many times a tweet has been seen! This is normal for video.
“Shows how much more alive Twitter is than it may seem, as over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply, or like, as those are public actions”.
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Twitter is rolling out View Count, so you can see how many times a tweet has been seen! This is normal for video.
Shows how much more alive Twitter is than it may seem, as over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply or like, as those are public actions.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2022
The feature is currently available on iOS and Android, although it is not yet accessible to all users as it is gradually rolling out and is also expected to be launched on the web version soon.
Although, Twitter already has a similar feature that shows users more detailed analytics about their tweets other than just likes, retweets, and quotes tweets.
Once users click on “view Tweet analytics” under their Tweet, they can get to see how people interacted with the tweet in ways such as clicking to view their profile or expanding the details of a quote tweet.
Users can also see the total number of impressions which is titled “Times this tweet was seen on Twitter”.
Following the rollout of this recent “view count” feature, it has been followed with mixed reactions from users as some have expressed satisfaction while majority of users don’t find the feature interesting.
@libbycwatson wrote, “sir you are so brave and smart. you are genius man. please add an option to turn it off because it is extremely stupid. not you though, you’re really smart”.
@ChefGruel wrote, “This will give us a better indication as to who buys followers. The new Nielsen ratings.”
@DannyMekic wrote, “I think you’re making a mistake here. A tweet is not a video. A video we watch many minutes. In a minute, we see many tweets. Seeing the view count of every tweet is highly irrelevant, distracting, and in general annoying.”
@D3NNI_yt wrote, “I have genuinely not seen a single person like this update. please consider reverting back, or if it’s THAT important for “views” to be public (I’m assuming for advertisers or wtv) just add a public analytics button under every tweet that anyone can check. it’s WAY too cluttered”.
@tomcoates wrote, “This is 100% going to backfire. When people realize just how few people read the average tweet they’ll wonder why they bother. Expect this decision (like most of the others) to be reversed pretty quickly.”
@Zaackhunt wrote, “I think I speak for all Twitter users when I say thank you for creating another unhealthy metric for me to measure my self-worth.”
@TomABacon wrote, “This is going to sound absurd, I’m sure, but… what counts as a view? There are lots of tweets I simply scroll past, without looking at; lots where I read for a second and then scroll on without finishing. The ones that count are the ones I engage with.”
@gchahal wrote, “Will this be publicly viewable for everyone to see on every post? If so you might have killed most of the RT/Like bot farms right there.”
It is however interesting to note that ever since Musk completed the acquisition deal and took over as the CEO of Twitter, he has been carrying out a series of revamps on the platform.
From downsizing the workforce, paid verification, enabling free speech, exposing internal documents, view count features, Banning links to other social apps, Account reinstatements, and so on.
It seems a lot of users are not in any way enjoying Musk’s regime as the CEO of the company as most of his policies and features have been followed with a backlash.
Also, on Monday 19, 2022, the majority of users voted for him to step down as the head of Twitter after he created a poll for them to vote if he should step down as the company’s CEO.
He wrote, “should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.”
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
On the final results of the poll, 57.5% voted yes, while 42.5% voted no.
After the results he wrote, “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”