Twitter's Latest Feature Lets You See How Many People Have Viewed Your Tweet
The past few months have been a turbulent and confusing time for even the most ardent of Twitter users. Following new CEO Elon Musk's controversial takeover of the social media platform in late October, Twitter has undergone several changes in terms of features and policy updates. The most recent example of a significant departure on Twitter was the decision prohibiting what Twitter described as the "free promotion of certain social media platforms." While Twitter quickly backtracked on this rule, the policy effectively barred people from sharing links to competing social media platforms like Mastodon, Facebook, or Instagram.
Following the takeover, Musk promised several feature additions to Twitter, including some long-demanded ones like the ability to write longer posts or edit Tweets. In November 2022, Musk also shared his vision for what he referred to as Twitter 2.0, in which the platform gets better advertising avenues for brands, enabling end-to-end encryption on DMs, and revamping Twitter's paid Blue subscription service. However, the revamped Twitter Blue subscription quickly ran into problems, after which Twitter rolled the feature back. In early December, Musk relaunched Twitter Blue subscriptions to anyone who paid for the service — giving them a "Verified" checkmark and access to exclusive features.
Another feature that Musk had discussed in the early days of the Twitter acquisition saga was letting users see a view count for tweets. Starting Dec. 22, 2022, the feature appears to be rolling out to users across the world.
Twitter now shows view count on individual tweets
On December 22, 2022, several Twitter users reported seeing a view counter appear on individual tweets. The view counter became visible when users clicked and expanded their tweets. On accounts that have received this feature update, the view counter can be spotted right next to the "like" and "retweet" buttons. Later in the day, Musk confirmed that the much sought-after "View Counter" feature was finally rolling out to everyone. He claims that the feature will let users know how "alive" the social media platform really is.
Twitter is rolling out View Count, so you can see how many times a tweet has been seen! This is normal for video.
Shows how much more alive Twitter is than it may seem, as over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply or like, as those are public actions.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2022
Twitter already had a similar view counter for videos uploaded to the platform for a while. However, note that the view counter feature differs from the "Tweet Analytics" feature that has been around for several years. While this feature did allow Twitter users to check how well their tweets performed, it was always a few clicks away and was not directly viewable. Another key difference with the new view counter is that, unlike private analytics, the number of views is visible to everyone.
Not all Twitter users seem to have received the view counter update as of drafting this article. While Twitter hasn't confirmed this, it looks as though the feature is being rolled out in phases across the Twitter user base.