Twitter is pushing a new long-form blogging feature named Twitter Notes, which the company established in a tweet. The platform says the feature is available to a distinguished group of users in the US, Canada, UK, and Ghana and that individuals “in most countries” can read Notes on and off Twitter.
Twitter shared how the feature will operate in two separate GIFs. First, users can connect to the “Write” tab to start writing a Note and embed it into their tweet when completed.
Several authors have already published Notes on the forum, which appear as long-form posts that can have tweets, videos, and photos mixed in.
Leaks and information about such a feature have been leaking for months, including Tuesday’s announcement that initially suggested that Twitter is working on the quality. In May, app experimenter Jane Manchun Wong shared screenshots of a feature called Twitter Notes in some places and Twitter Articles in others.
It lets users write formatted blog posts with pictures, links, and embedded tweets. Another app researcher, Nima Owji, shared screenshots of the same tool in April, which showed users options to share posts with their followers or create standalone links for centers to communicate elsewhere on the web.
Adding a long-form script to Twitter could drastically change the platform’s character, which has long been defined by a short-hand form (at first, tweets were just 140 characters in stature, before doubling to 280 characters in 2017). Twitter is arguably already full of extended written screeds, shared in the form of threads of tweets or tweeted screenshots of others’ writings or users’ writing (usually caught in the iOS Notes app).
By including long-form writing into its platform, Twitter could potentially capture more of the importance of these posts. Publishing articles or notes instantly to Twitter would cause the text indexable for marketing and search intents. It could also dovetail with the company’s developing Newsletter feature.
In 2021, Twitter bought newsletter firm Revue to take on competitors like Substack and has since blended Revue newsletters into users’ Twitter profiles. However, the feature does not yet appear to have achieved wider vogue.