Twitter is Working on a Long-Form “Notes” Feature

After doubling the maximum number of characters in a tweet to 280 a couple of years ago, Twitter is reportedly working on a new “Notes” feature for long-form content. According to Techcrunch, Twitter Notes is already being tested with select users and the company may soon share more details about it.

In the past couple of weeks, app researchers Nima Owji and Jane Manchung Mong both shared screenshots of what could be the new feature, which was then called “Twitter Article.” As you can see in the image below posted by Wong in May, the feature will provide access to formatting options and allow users to add pictures and embed tweets in their posts.

The Twitter Article Composer now comes with a “Focus Mode” (that button on the top-right) that expands the composer to the full screen, hides away the side bars pic.twitter.com/oOhyM1IIWs

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) May 4, 2022

If Twitter has always been known as a microblogging platform, it’s already being used to publish long-form content. It has become pretty common to encounter absurdly long threads of tweets on the platform. “Screenshorting,” which is the practice of sharing a screenshot of an article written in a note-taking app to avoid Twitter’s character limit has also become pretty common.

Twitter has already shown increasing interest in long-form content. Last year, the company acquired newsletter company Revue and made it easy to subscribe to a Revue newsletter from a Twitter profile. It’s also worth recalling that Evan Williams, one of the co-founders of Twitter founded the publishing platform Medium 10 years ago.

Twitter may have a lot of issues right now which may be exacerbated by all the Elon Musk, but it’s a platform media companies and journalists can’t avoid. Making it possible to write long-form content on Twitter could really help to make the platform more appealing for publishers, especially if these posts can be indexed by search engines.

Update 1PM 10 ET: Twitter has made Twitter Notes official and confirmed that it’s testing the new feature with a small group of writers.

✨ Introducing: Notes ✨

We’re testing a way to write longer on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/SnrS4Q6toX

— Twitter Write (@TwitterWrite) June 22, 2022