Twitter has rolled out an Impressions Count feature that lets people see the impressions a tweet makes. Now all the tweets will display the number of times the original tweet was served to the users. This is being done to show how alive Twitter is more than it seems which may not be the best way to show the platform’s activity. This feature is only available without any cost for iOS and Android devices. CEO Elon Musk made the announcement in a tweet on December 22. He meant to write “impressions” which was later clarified in a tweet.
Chelsea Larson-Andrews, a co-founder of the B2B marketing services company TechMode, told us “Although Elon promised ‘View Counts’ earlier this month I was surprised to see it rolling out real-time on Wednesday night. On one hand, the move is contradictory to trends on other platforms like Instagram and Facebook which started allowing users to hide ‘Likes’ last year or YouTube started hiding public ‘Dislikes’ in 2021.”
Meant to say impressions
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2022
Twitter impressions
Twitter impressions used to be private and were only meant to be seen by the person who tweets. But now, impressions are the first thing one sees on the bar that displays likes, comments, and retweets.
If the tweet also has a video, the view count shows the views on the video in addition to the impressions. Since the placement of the impressions icon is jarring, most people voted in a poll posted by Musk to move it to the right.
Twitter votes for the right haha https://t.co/hx2nVqGQue
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 23, 2022
Do we need this feature?
Musk says that over 90% of users on Twitter just read the tweet and don’t take public actions of liking or retweeting. Meanwhile, showering likes and comments is routine on platforms such as YouTube and Instagram. The little bit of privacy on Twitter seems to be evolving with new and confusing changes being introduced.
“To be completely honest, from a societal standpoint I’m not sure how I feel about it. From the perspective of a B2B influencer marketing agency owner, I love the transparency. The more information made public, the better for our clients to see the value and reach of our campaigns,” Larson-Andrews adds.
We will continue to monitor how Twitter is changing and how the changes impact not only the work of influencers but the experience of all Twitter users.
Photo credit: The feature image is symbolic and was done by Khosrow Rajab Kordi.
