Twitter has announced a new feature for long-form content called Notes, which lets users publish a full-on article on the platform, expanding the kind of stories you can tweet. It is paired together with Twitter Write, a composer tool for the longer form that comes with a lot of the editing features that you would normally see in a blog post composer.
Twitter Write will let you insert hyperlinks, photos, GIFs, a header image, embedded Tweets, and it also has plenty of other typical text editing tools. Instead of a “Tweet” button, there is a proper “Publish” button instead for Note cards.
https://twitter.com/TwitterWrite/status/1539640956915290112
Note cards are previews of the article that authors publish in a tweet, which will have unique URLs that can be accessed even if the person clicking does not have a Twitter account. You can’t reply or react to the Note in the article itself, but you can do so from the tweet that contains the Note card.
What is most notable about the new feature is that while the platform has limited posts to 280 characters since 2017, Notes has a limit of 2,500 words, with the title limited to 100 characters. Authors will also be able to edit an article after it has been published, an ability that the social media giant is also working on for its tweets.
The feature is currently being tested with a small group of writers in the US, UK, Canada, and Ghana, although users in “most countries” will still be able to read Notes on and off Twitter. While the company didn’t specify which countries will be left out, we were able to access the articles just fine so it seems Malaysia is included in the list.
With Notes is currently still in development, Twitter did not mention when it plans to roll the new feature out globally. While it said that it plans to expand it to more people gradually, it did not specify whether the publishing privileges would still be limited to certain users or it would eventually be made available to everyone.
