Twitter is now adding ‘read receipts’, typing indicators, and automatic web-link previews to its “direct messages” giving it chat-like functionality. These new dynamic Twitter Direct Messages allow you to see who is reading and responding to your messages. Below is a recent tweet from Twitter itself: New! Direct Messages are more dynamic than ever with read receipts, typing indicators, and web link previews. pic.twitter.com/VEU92V5Gqj — Twitter (@twitter) September 8, 2016 Over the years that Twitter has been mainstream, the “tweet” has morphed from a simple 140-character text message now beholden to more creative expression featuring: hashtags, images/photos, videos, vines, and now more. Twitter has added the ability to poll your community, react quickly and cleverly with GIFs, and share and enjoy Periscope broadcasts in Tweets. You can now do a lot in a Tweet. In the coming months Twitter will be making changes to simplify tweets including what counts towards the 140 character limit. For example, @names in replies and media attachments (like photos, videos, & polls) will no longer use up valuable characters. Here’s a summary of planned changes: · Replies: When replying to a Tweet, @names will no longer count toward the 140-character count. This will make having conversations on Twitter easier and more straightforward, no more penny-pinching your words to ensure they reach the whole group. · Media attachments: When you add attachments like photos, GIFs, videos, polls, or Quote Tweets, that media will no longer count as characters within your Tweet. More room for words! · Retweet and Quote Tweet yourself: We’ll be enabling the Retweet button on your own Tweets, so you can easily Retweet or Quote Tweet yourself when you want to share a new reflection or feel like a really good one went unnoticed. · Goodbye”.@: These changes will help simplify the rules around Tweets that start with a username. New Tweets that begin with a username will reach all your followers. (That means you’ll no longer have to use the ”.@” convention, which people currently use to broadcast Tweets broadly.) If you want a reply to be seen by all your followers, you will be able to Re-tweet it to signal that...
