Category: Twitter

Twitter has begun the process of rolling out a new bottom navigation bar to everyone.  The update to the Twitter for Android app is a cloud-side update meaning that so long as you have the latest version of the app, you should get the new navigation bar in the social app.  For those that are curious, the latest version is 7.53.0.

There isn’t a lot of mystery here – you get a bottom navigation bar when this update is pushed to your account.  You have the Home (feed), search, notifications, and direct messages all a single tap away with the tab you are on highlighted in blue.

Twitter has begun rolling out a handy new feature to their mobile apps and site:  Bookmarks.  The bookmarks feature allows you to save a Tweet in your feed to read later or to share later.  There appears to be no expiration of the bookmarks either so you can, in theory, save them for as long as you want.

The new feature is rolling out as a cloud-side update to the Twitter apps for both Android and iOS and is also live on the mobile site, mobile.twitter.com.  It does not appear to be on the main Twitter site, at least not yet.

Twitter has finally begun allowing users to use 3rd party two factor authentication apps to verify their identity.  The new feature is rolling out to users accounts online and you can now select the default SMS authentication or a 3rd party authentication tool.

In April, the social micro blogging site rolled out SMS authentication that allowed users to have an authentication code texted to them when they were logging into their account.  That is still enabled by default but you now have the option to use a 3rd party app like Google Authenticator to verify your identity.   The feature requires that you log into your Twitter account online, then go to Settings & Privacy in your account settings.  There you can setup an authentication app.

Following up on their iOS and web updates, Twitter has now begun rolling out a new Popular Articles feature in their Android app.  The update requires that you have the latest version of their app but this new feature is a cloud-side change that is rolling out to users.

The new Popular Articles feature is based on the interaction with articles from those that you follow on the service.  In other words, if a handful of those that you follow on Twitter like or retweet an article, it will show up in this new section.

In an effort to meet the need of subscribers with slow connections, Twitter has introduced a new web-based Twitter Lite solution.  Twitter Lite is aimed for those on unstable or unreliable networks as well as those on slow connections.  Indeed, based on a report from GSMA, 45% of smartphone connections are on 2G speeds or slower.  Using data compression and other techniques, the Lite version of Twitter can launch about 30% quicker.  It is also more resilient on slow speed connections.

The new Lite version is accessed by going to mobile.twitter.com from your mobile device.  Once there, you will see that it looks pretty much like your normal Twitter feed.  Now tap on your profile avatar to go into Settings.  About halfway down you will see a new Data Saving feature which you can enable.  This further reduces the load of Twitter to your phone’s browser, by up to 70%.

Twitter continues to tweak their service to give you more space in your replies on the service.  Starting today, the company is rolling out an update to users that eliminates the username of those to whom you are replying to from your 140 character limit.  This means you will have those characters to formulate your reply and, hopefully, not have to do so in multiple Tweets.

How this works is pretty straightforward.  When you reply to a Tweet, the @username part is removed from the tweet but you are shown who you are replying to at the top of the page on your Android phone.  While this isn’t a big deal for individuals you are replying to, for large groups, it is a big space saver.