Twitter has announced new features for its platform, including more flexible controls and the ability to send cryptocurrency between users.
Twitter is adding Bitcoin to its Tips feature, which allowed users to send money to others through PayPal and other third-party services, and rolling that out throughout the world.
This allows users to add their bitcoin wallet to their profile and send the cryptocurrency directly within the app, starting today, through Strike, a third-party a payments application built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
Tips was originally only available for selected users but will now be accessible to users on iPhones with Android users coming soon. Twitter says that users in countries like Africa might not have access to traditional providers, and bitcoin represents “one of the best solutions” of “forward-looking” solutions.
Twitter’s Jack Dorsey has been a long advocate of cryptocurrency, saying that it would “unite the world” and believes it will become the “native currency of the internet”.
Tipping is entirely on third-party platforms, so does not receive a cut from donations; when users choose a service, it will open the app or a website. The bitcoin lightning wallet invoice is generated by Twitter when transferring crypto currency, and when that invoice is paid off-platform the social media site will send a notification to the receiver that can be replied with using a preset reply or emojis.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are also becoming a bigger part of Twitter, with the company ‘exploring’ NFT authentication, letting users directly connect their crypto wallets and show off their NFT ownership on Twitter.
In a call with reporters, Twitter’s Product Lead for Conversational Safety Christine Su also said that the company will be introducing a way to leave a conversation that they have been tagged in and is ‘exploring’ word filters to remove unwanted speech or “targeted name calling” as well as emojis and other terms.
These updates follow Twitter’s other changes, such as allowing users to control who can reply and the “Safety Mode” that the company is testing to auto-block accounts, as well as allowing users to remove followers – which was previously done via ‘soft blocking’, which is when someone blocks and then unblocks a user.
Twitter is adding more context to its tweets so people can “trust who they are talking to”, Su says, by adding profile labels and a new “heads up” experiment that will inform users when they are joining a “potentially heated discussion” through a label underneath a Tweet, the company showed in a concept mock-up.
Twitter will be finding these ‘vibes’, which is in “early days”, using automated technology, but eventually wants to allow authors to set their own tones to the conversation – comparing its experiment to
Following up with its Communities feature, Twitter is trying to let users “set their own norms”. Twitter has said that moderators in those spaces will not be held responsible to Twitter’s rules, allowing users to create
Twitter says that tweets in a Community remains public, and can be quote-tweeted outside the community, but will not be spread outside the community by default unless a user already within that group decides to do so.
A creator fund for audio creators is also being created, as well as recording and replay functions being added to the tool for Spaces, its Clubhouse-like voice-call groups.
