Twitter to soon roll out Facebook-like emoji reactions for tweets

Microblogging website Twitter is working on emoji reactions to tweets, similar to the ones available on Facebook. While taking to the social media platform, reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong shared a screenshot of new emoticons and informed that Twitter could include reactions such as Likes, Cheer, Hmm, Sad, and Haha. The reactions are currently under development and some of them in the screenshot, especially Cheer and Sad, were shown to be using a placeholder Heart emoji. 

Based on the screenshot shared by Wong, Twitter will display the different tweet reactions along with the number of reactions received. The new feature is similar to how Facebook displays emoji reactions to posts and comments. Further, the microblogging website is additionally also expected to show who reacted with which emoji. 

The ‘anger’ emoji is however missing. It is worth mentioning that Twitter had previously provided a preview of these emoji reactions through a survey it conducted back in March 2021. It had also mentioned a downvote/dislike button but there’s no word of that now.

The new feature would now add to the existing heart icon on the social media platform. With the emoji reactions, Twitter may also start looking similar to Facebook. However, as of now, there is no word on when the website will release the new feature. 

Twitter Spaces 

Meanwhile, earlier this week Twitter went live with its new audio conversation app ‘Spaces’ on the computer desktops and Android iOS web browsers. The Clubhouse-type live audio conversations app will appear at the top of your Twitter timeline as a ‘purple bubble’ for as long as it’s live. On the desktops or web browsers, when a user joins ‘Space’ as a listener, they can react to what they hear with emojis, check out any pinned Tweets, as well as follow along with captions, Tweet or DM Space, or request to speak.

According to Twitter, all Spaces are ‘public’ like Tweets, which means they can be accessed by anyone. They will automatically appear at the top of your Home timeline, where you see Fleets, and each space has a link that can be shared publicly. This also implies that anyone across Twitter can join any space as a Listener. But for speakers, by default Twitter’s Space will always be set to only people that the user “invites to speak.” However, this can be changed. 

(Image: AP)