Interacting With Tweets on Your Timeline Could Soon Get Little Complicated
Imagine scrolling through your X feed, but it’s just filled with tweets, with no engagement metrics and options to interact in sight. Would you prefer it that way?
Christopher Stanley, Sr. Director of Security Engineering at X, shared a video showing a tweaked UI in action on his X account. The new UI sees the like, repost, and other options you find below a tweet move to a new place. Besides, the like and retweet count have also been hidden. While the shared video only shows the notifications tab, these changes could be rolled out to the home timeline as well.
However, it’s worth noting that like Instagram, X will not completely hide the like counts. They will still be accessible with some extra effort, as you’ll need to open a tweet to see them.
Similarly, interacting with a tweet could also become a little complicated. You’ll need to long-press on it until an “exploding menu” appears with options such as like, repost, etc. Then, you’ll have to swipe your thumb onto a button and lift it to perform that action. For example, to like a tweet, you will need to long-press on it, drag your thumb to the like button and lift it. Christopher describes this as similar to a “video game interface.”
The New Timeline Could Be Rolled Out Soon
The tweet gained a mixed bag of feedback from the users. Some appreciated it, saying that hiding the engagement metrics could redirect users’ focus back to genuine conversations, rather than just engagements. Some expressed disappointment, saying that X is trying to fix something that’s not broken, and this will only make things complicated.
Ellis Driscoll, a software engineer at X, replied to a user concerned about this change that “Major UX changes are usually still tested carefully, especially for timeline/trends/explore.” Ellis added, “I’m not working on this change myself, but employees are still dogfooding it. It should be gradually rolled out to users in the next few weeks, and the UX may change by then.” This suggests that the revamp is still in development, and by the time it rolls out, it could be changed for a better and refined user experience.
If implemented, it will be a major change, and getting used to it would take some time. What are your thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments.
