It was not long ago, this month, that Twitter announced they are considering adding remarkable and very fun options to the platform, but they would not be free. Twitter posted a job listing called ‘Gryphon’ for new positions, which, the ad explained, would be focused on building a subscription platform, one that can be reused by other teams in the future.

After that, Twitter officially said that you might have to pay to access tweets or additional features, and it was confirmed that Twitter is working on “subscriptions and other approaches” as potential revenue opportunities.

Moreover, so many users reported that they have been seeing a new Twitter survey that asks them about a range of potential options that they might be willing to pay for, another step towards the next stage for the project.

Details of the survey were first published to none other than Twitter itself by Twitter user @WFBrother. The findings were then amplified by social media consultant, Matt Navarra, who had also seen the survey.

The options which could be made available via Twitter subscriptions include:

• Undo send: An option to recall your sent tweets within a 30-second window.
• Custom color options: New ways to customize your Twitter profile presentation.
• Advanced video publishing tools: The capacity to publish significantly longer videos in your tweets.
• Profile badges: A profile badge that links back to your business/employer.
• Auto replies: The capacity to add auto-response options to use in your tweet replies.
• Social listening: More insights into your tweet engagement and discussion around your Twitter handle.
• Brand surveys: An option to run surveys about your Twitter ads to get more feedback.
• Custom stickers and hashtags: The capability to create custom stickers and ‘hashflag’ emoji-linked hashtags.
• Job ads: Optional job ad listings.
• Administrator role management: New options to define how staff/contractors can control Twitter your account.
• Insights into other accounts: More analytics options, including the capacity to see all your past reactions with any account.
• Education resources: Access to more Twitter training courses and tools.

Moreover, twitter might give its users the chance to avoid seeing any ads in return for paying.  

Anyways, the survey does not represent features Twitter will definitely roll out as part of any future membership model, of course. It’s only the first step to gathering consumer feedback about what people believe is worth paying for.

By the way, which of the options, offered by Twitter, would you be willing to pay for? To me, it might just be the “Undo Send” and “No Ads” which would both give me somehow a feeling of more freedom on the platform. What about you? 

Get out of your Twitter bubble and into someone else’s. Today, a very interesting Twitter tool is rolled out, which most of you, Twitter users would find very cool.

‘Vicariously’ app lets you snoop on other people’s Twitter timelines, and it finally lets you find out what Trump’s Twitter feed looks like (if you really want to).

This tool is created by ilk co-founder Jake Harding. One of the main options of Vicariously is that it lets you create Twitter lists automatically based on the following of other Twitter users. So if you want to know what scrolling through Donald Trump, Kanye West, J.K. Rowling, or Hozier’s Twitter feeds might be like, this app can give you an idea.

As Jake Harding, The founder of Vicariously stated in his latest tweet, he has been thinking about ways to overhaul Twitter experience, so he built Vicariously, and he is pretty happy with the end results. It’s an easy way to create (and sync) lists based on the follows of another user.

 What does Vicariously do?

As mentioned earlier, one of the main functions of this app is that it offers the easiest way to create Twitter lists based on the following of other users. In addition, Vicariously syncs lists daily to ensure they’re always up to date.

Regarding further details by Mashable, The app doesn’t just let you straight up snoop on who someone follows, though. Vicariously also lets you create lists that combine the follows of multiple accounts, only show the shared follows of multiple accounts, only show the follows of one account that aren’t also followed by another, or only show the following that different accounts don’t have in common.

It further allows you to pin your lists to the top of your home timeline for easy access, for a bit of extra convenience 

Vicariously seems like a pretty nifty app, but it may not be long for this world if it doesn’t grow up quickly. Some people have expressed concern about privacy and complained that others using the app spammed them with Twitter notifications telling them they’d been added to various lists.

The app has been out for just a couple of weeks, and it now allows free users to create private lists, lets people stop others from creating lists based on who they follow, and lets people prevent others from adding them to lists.

What is Twitter’s reaction to Vicariously? 

Twitter has expressed that it is impressed by the idea of Vicariously and how it works, but since some users have expressed privacy concerns, Twitter has also started to see the bad effects of the app.

Twitter told TechCrunch that while it “loves that Vicariously uses Lists to help people find new accounts to follow and get new perspectives,” the app violates its rules concerning automation.

“We’ve reached out to them to find a way to bring the app into compliance with our rules,” said Twitter. Ultimately, we all hope that Twitter sorts out their issues with the app and lets users make the best use of Vicariously to use Twitter in a much more useful and interesting way. 

This news is interesting but still not officially announced. As some sources say, Twitter is apparently testing out a new set of app icons on iOS, and a new intro animation when users open the app.

This news is spread while Twitter is still coping with the huge disaster of getting hacked by professional hackers, which manipulated the accounts of some of the most prominent people on the social network.

Twitter appears to be considering offering the users additional choices for the Twitter app icon on iOS home screens. This news has emerged based on a new survey sent out to members of its Twitter Insiders beta program.

Twitter has offered four app icons to get feedback on which ones to officially roll out. One of the icons is the current default Twitter for iOS icon. The goal of the survey is to figure out which icons Twitter users prefer, and the results could affect which icons are offered in the Twitter app.

Many users sat that this update might stay just as a test and Of course, it’s also possible that Twitter leaves things as they are and doesn’t add new icons

Twitter’s new splash screen

Besides the icons, Twitter is also seen to be testing a new splash screen. The splash screen looks very cool and splashy, which is very unlike Twitter. It is known to play it conservatively when it comes to design and colors.

As I mentioned earlier, there are still no official statements of any of the two updates, and they might not be globally rolled out and stay as only beta updates, which would go away soon.

Twitter yesterday announced that it had removed a video, which was a campaign video over a copyright complaint.

Linkin Park said that the band did not authorize the use of their song “In the end” by the Trump campaign. The song “In the End” was featured in the background of the video, which included images of President Trump and excerpts from his inauguration speech.

Twitter later clarified the deletion of the video in a statement:

“Per our copyright policy, we respond to valid copyright complaints sent to us by the copyright owner or their authorized representative,” a Twitter spokesperson said in an email to The Verge.

On July 19th the verified Linkin Park Twitter account tweeted:

“Linkin Park did not and did not endorse Trump nor authorize his organization to use any of our music. A cease and desist has been issued.”

The video campaign tweet was originally tweeted White House social media director Dan Scavino.

Twitter labeled the tweet and left a notice on the post, saying: “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.”

This is not the first time that Trump’s tweets get flagged by Twitter, or he reacts to tweets that violate Twitter’s policies.

For example, as pointed out by The Verge, they were two other cases lately, which provoked the public anger and made Twitter flag or remove Trump’s tweets.

Last month, it disabled a four-minute campaign video that included images of George Floyd, the Minneapolis man who died May 25th after a police officer kneeled on his neck. Facebook and Instagram removed posts from their platforms that featured the video. The president called the removal “illegal,” in a tweet, but Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responded: “Not true and not illegal. This was pulled because we got a DMCA complaint from the copyright holder.” Trump has had other tweets flagged by Twitter that it said ran afoul of its content policies. In May, the social media platform added a label to a tweet where Trump warned “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” because Twitter said the tweet violated its policy against glorifying violence. A June tweet by the president featuring a doctored video was labeled as “manipulated media.”

On 15^th July 2020, Twitter has experienced its most horrible security issue and hack of all time; the hacking incident is the most widespread and confounding hacks the platform has ever seen. It could be even named as the most shameful hack in the world of all social media networks EVER since it has had lots of financial damage for both Twitter users and Twitter company.

This massive hack’s goal was primary in service of promoting a bitcoin scam that appears to be earning its creators quite a bit of money.

How did the hack happen?

The hack was started by several high-profile accounts tweeted about the same Bitcoin wallet, urging followers to send cryptocurrency with the promise of returning double the amount. According to the Associated Press and multiple outlets. Tweets sent from these accounts offered to pay $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to a bitcoin address.

Twitter started investigating the issue right after they noticed the attack, and it was assumed to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of Twitter’s employees with access to internal systems and tools.

It is not yet clear what other malicious activity the hacker might have done besides using that access to tweet about the Bitcoin scam from many major Twitter accounts.

Which verified twitter accounts were hacked?

The hackers targeted various range of accounts, including politicians, Hollywood celebrities, Musicians, Tech billionaires, and huge corporations such as Apple. According to Republic World, below is the complete list of all the accounts which were hacked on 15^th July:

1. Barack Obama, former United States President

2. Elon Musk, Entrepreneur, CEO of Tesla Motors, SpaceX, The Boring Company

3. Bill Gates, Entrepreneur, and Founder of Microsoft

4. Joe Biden, Democratic Nominee for President of the United States

5. Warren Buffett, Investor, and Tycoon

6. Jeff Bezos, Entrepreneur and Founder of Amazon

7. Mike Bloomberg, Entrepreneur and Former Mayor of New York City

8. Kanye West, Musician, and Entrepreneur

9. Wiz Khalifa, Musician

10. Floyd Mayweather, Boxer

11. Apple, Software and Hardware Giant

12. Uber, Cab Aggregator Service

13. Binance, Cryptocurrency Exchange Company

14. Cash App, Mobile Payment Service in the US

15. Tron Foundation, block-chain based operating system company

16. Kucoin, Cryptocurrency Exchange Company

What did Twitter do about the hack?

As the first step in avoiding further activities by the hackers, and to start fixing the issue, Twitter banned the affected accounts from tweeting, removed the tweets posted by the attackers, and announced that everything is under control. 

Since the hacked accounts were verified accounts of very well-known people, besides the affected accounts, Twitter also restricted many other high-profile accounts on Wednesday evening, which meant that many, if not all, verified users were unable to tweet for a period of time. However, by now, the activities of accounts are restored.

The Twitter CEO and staff have expressed the disappointment they are feeling after this incident. For example, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey wrote:

“Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened. We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.”

Product chief Kayvon Beykpour also wrote on his personal account that:

“Our investigation into the security incident is still ongoing, but we’ll be posting updates from @TwitterSupport with more detail soon. In the meantime, I just wanted to say that I’m really sorry for the disruption and frustration this incident has caused our customers.”

Twitter is now said to be returning the money users lost to this malicious activity soon.

After this awful security incident, Twitter shares are decreased by more than 4%, and people are starting to have trust issues with Twitter. We hope that twitter comes out of this mess successfully and gains its users’ trust again.

Twitter seems to be working on a new subscription-based offering for limited users after the company shared a new job listing, which is for a mysterious new Twitter subscription team, codenamed ‘Gryphon.’

As you can see in the above description and pictured shared by Social Media Today, the Gryphon team will reportedly work with Twitter’s payments group on a subscription process – “a first for Twitter.” What form, exactly, a subscription-based Twitter offering would take is unclear, but the speculation alone saw Twitter shares jump 12%, with investors keen to understand more about a potential new revenue stream for the platform.

The job posting announcement did not clarify anything more or explained any details to Twitter’s eventual plans, but it is obvious that the team behind the subscription platform will work closely with the internal Payment team. That does suggest some possible directions Twitter might head.

As some professionals suggest, it seems like twitter may also be considering Twitter may also be considering a Twitch- or Patreon-style type of subscription, where you could subscribe to individual accounts in some way. We’ve reached out to Twitter to comment on its subscription plans, and we’ll update you accordingly.

Twitter has now made a little change to the job listing announcement and has removed the mention of a potential subscription feature in development or the Gryphon team working on it. The job listing is now simply in search of an android engineer for work on a bevy of backend engineering teams to build components that allow for experimentation to deliver the best experience possible to all of our users.”

Such a thing can have a huge impact on the future of Twitter. Take the example of a new Twitter in which you have to pay to access their tweets or news outlets that can share breaking stories or in-depth reporting with their subscribers before their non-paying Twitter followers.

Twitter is now working on rolling out two useful options on the platform, which are new controls over who can reply to your tweets and new updates on twitter stories “Fleets.”

Twitter is testing new options on its newest and coolest new feature, “Fleets,” which, as lots of you know, is similar to stories on Instagram but is called “Fleets on twitter.
This new update on “Fleets” includes the “double bubble fleets” that let people merge into a single stream. Clicking on it will make people see the two twitter users’ Fleet in one time.

When two users post a collaborative fleet, tapping on a fleet would seemingly enable followers of the two users to view their collaborative Fleet.

This new double-bubble Fleet feature can have so many uses among users, such as interviews, real-time highlights from events, GIF wars, etc. This is somehow like the Instagram live co-streaming option.

New controls over who can reply to your tweets

Twitter has also been seeking new ways to facilitate additional tweet discussion options, like more confined discussions within tweet streams.

As explained by Twitter product manager Kayvon Beykpour in October last year:

“It’s actually quite difficult to have a fireside chat when you have a billion people screaming into your ear. Like imagine we had tens of thousands of people in the studio with us right now, talking into our ear while we were talking to each other.” 

Social media today has best interpreted this statement by concluding that, Beykpour, in this instance, was specifically referring to the challenges of hosting a Q and A session via tweet, because everyone can use an event hashtag and add their thoughts to a stream, making it hard for both participants and users to follow a single thread.

That’s what lead to Twitter developing its new controls over who can reply to your tweets, which are now in testing with some users.

Maybe, this Fleet option would align with that focus and provide another way to facilitate more confined, limited conversations within the app.

In the past few days, twitter has been labeling several tweets that were about COVID-19 as misleading. Most of the tweets were labeled by mistake, which made Twitter apologize for the huge misunderstanding.

Regarding The Verge website, Twitter began fact-checking tweets that linked 5G and the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this month, by adding the label that reads “get the facts about COVID-19” which links to a Twitter moment with “No, 5G isn’t causing coronavirus” as its title

Twitter made excuses claiming that it is operating on strengthening how it labels tweets with problematic 5G or coronavirus content material, and that’s why such minor issues happen.

“In the last few weeks, you may have seen Tweets with labels linking to additional info about COVID-19,” Twitter Help tweeted. “Not all of those Tweets had potentially misleading content associating COVID-19 and 5G.”

The problem was caused by the program that decided which tweet should be flagged as misleading. Users figured out that the program has mistakenly flagged the tweets, which include the words and phrases “oxygen” and “frequency.”

The fact-check label is part of Twitter’s effort to attach warning labels to provide context for tweets with misleading COVID-19 information. In April, the company went so far as to remove misleading COVID-19-related tweets that it viewed as inciting people to engage in “harmful activity.”

Twitter now says it is trying to solve the issue as soon as possible by building new automated capabilities to apply these labels to Tweets we think could be relevant.

As a lot of you might have noticed by now, Twitter has rolled out a different feature, the one none of us has thought of before, the Audio Tweets, the ability to record audio snippets, and attach them to your tweets.

The new feature has been rolled out to only a limited group of iOS users and might soon be available to other users, including desktop and android users. Now, there would be no limit of 280 characters, and everyone can record up to 140 seconds of what they want to share with Twitter and the world.

Although we all became Interested as the new feature emerged, it turned out to have a huge issue. The accessibility issue.

The accessibility issue

The new audio tweet feature seems to be getting good feedback, and most of the users are using and enjoying the feature. But unfortunately, Twitter has overlooked some groups of people, and every one could partake in the fun.

The feature has raised the voice of some accessibility advocated and made them complain about the feature to the world. Twitter is now criticized for not being considerate of its users who are deaf or hard of hearing when launching audio tweets. On the other hand, all other platforms such as YouTube or Facebook YouTube or Facebook provide for those with disabilities to make sure that they consume the content posted on the platforms completely.

Meanwhile, Twitter has tried to make excuses for this issue on a tweet stating that the problem has taken place because the audio tweet feature was an early release of the product. This tweet has provoked even worse reactions than before.

Twitter then apologized in a tweet and confessed that Accessibility should not be an afterthought. And it seems like it has made a promise to fix this accessibility issue as fast as possible. The company is now allegedly working on improving its accessibility review and exploring the possibility of building that “more dedicated group” to focus on the problem.

We hope to hear good news from twitter on solving the audio tweet accessibility issue as soon as possible so that everyone can enjoy expressing their thoughts and opinions freely with 140-second audio tweets on twitter.