What does a “like” really mean on Twitter? It’s usually meant as a show of appreciation or agreement, but sometimes it’s just a way for the user to bookmark a certain tweet for later. Sometimes the direct messaging and retweeting functions serve the same purpose.
Well, Twitter is wise to these facts, and it looks like the platform is about to unveil a proper bookmarking function for its users.
Late Monday, members of the Twitter product team emerged from a “HackWeek” development session with—as product chief Keith Coleman put it—a new way to save tweets to read later.
✨🌳🍉Fresh out of HackWeek and coming soon — a new way to save tweets to read later. Been a top request (❤️🇯🇵!) The team would love your feedback as they dial in the design! #SaveForLater 👇 https://t.co/6oo2lhqFbW
— Keith Coleman 🌱😀🙌 (@kcoleman) October 10, 2017
Here’s a demo of how the prototype tool currently looks, as shown off by associate product manager Jesar Shah, who stressed that it was “likely to change”:
For Hack Week @Twitter we started developing #SaveForLater. Here’s the early prototype that we put together in a week, which is likely to change. pic.twitter.com/c5LekvVF3l
— jesar 💭 (@jesarshah) October 9, 2017
Shah noted that there was particular demand for the feature in the Japanese market. People want to be able to “easily and privately” bookmark tweets, she said.
Twitter is constantly trying to find ways to make the service more attractive to regular users, as its user growth is stagnant. With the sometimes fast-moving and bewildering nature of a well-populated Twitter stream—the same issue Twitter addressed by introducing algorithmic filtering last year—a simple bookmarking feature could indeed prove very helpful.
Facebook has had a save-for-later feature for the last three years.