On February 19th we seen one of the lengthiest and widespread outages on Twitter in the UK - it came days after rumours about a major platform update that was said to be in the works.
Twitter has been a major player in the social media scene for a number of years and for businesses, arguably, it remains the most powerful. So, when it goes down (see #twitterdown) it becomes national news and frustrates millions of us!
News outlets including The Guardian, ITV, The Telegraph and CNBC all reported on the 'technical problem' that caused the outage.
Interestingly, just days before this outage, rumours leaked that the platform was due to update its approach to character limits - in fact, it was going to increase its 140 character limit for tweets to an astonishing 10,000 characters!
Sky News reported that Twitter's stock fell to an all-time-low when this announcement was made - so perhaps it won't go ahead?
Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder and Chief Executive, tweeted at the beginning of January his opinion of the 140 character tweet limit:
— Jack (@jack) January 5, 2016
Would you like to see a 10,000 character limit or do you like the 140 character limit?
It would certainly be interesting to see how it affected the way we use Twitter.
Moments and Polls
This rumour swiftly followed on from the addition of 'Moments', which is essentially a round-up of all of the biggest stories and updates on Twitter in real-time. See example:
Polls are also a recent update which allows users to literally conduct their own polls in a tweet. See example:
Ok tweeps, poll time! Who won the #DemDebate? (Mixed up the order, so please no tweets on where your fave is listed)
— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) January 18, 2016
Of course, how can we forget perhaps the most 'controversial' change - that little 'Favourite' star has become a heart icon!
#DrummondPuddleWatch
A Newcastle agency seen their Periscope feed trending #1 on Twitter earlier in January.
Why? A puddle!
The British love of weather garnered hundreds of thousands of Periscope views as we all watched people attempt to get around, over or through a puddle on a Newcastle street. Yes, really!
#DrummondPuddleWatch: Will this week be as exciting as the last? https://t.co/0KRF9VEo70 pic.twitter.com/N3RFktXJRZ
— Brandwatch React (@BW_React) January 12, 2016
There is our round-up of all that has gone on with Twitter recently - quite a lot, we think you'd agree! What changes would you like to see on Twitter? Let us know! Follow us and tweet @ThriveHQ.
