Twitter adds yet another metric to tweets
Tweets now show how many times they've been bookmarked
For its latest user interface update that no one really asked for, Twitter has introduced a bookmark counter that records how many people have saved your tweets.
Introduced in 2018, the bookmark feature works almost exactly as you’d expect, letting you save any tweet you come across in a central list for later viewing. It’s a handy way of keeping track of a useful thread, saving info you want to return to later, or just storing memes.
The Shortcut Skinny: Twitter bookmark counter
🔖 Twitter now records the number of times a tweet has been bookmarked
📱 The bookmark counter is only visible to iOS users
👀 Everyone can see a tweet’s bookmark count
🤔 But who asked for it?
The new bookmark counter records how many people have saved the tweet, a bit like the view counter that Twitter rolled out last December. Everyone can see bookmark counts, including the tweet’s author, reader and bookmarker, although the counter only shows the total number of bookmarks and not the individual accounts that have saved the tweet.
The feature is currently only visible on iOS devices, but Twitter said it “plans to expand” the feature and has emphasized that bookmarks are still private. “We’ll never display which accounts have added a Tweet to their Bookmarks,” the official Twitter account tweeted.
Twitter users haven’t exactly been crying out for a bookmark counter and the feature seems to be another way for the platform to reiterate how many people are engaging with it. When Twitter introduced view counts, CEO Elon Musk said the feature was designed to show “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”.
I’m not immediately swayed by the idea. As interesting as it may be to see which of your tweets have taken off or piqued someone’s interest enough that they save it for later, do we really need yet another metric to obsess over? The icon line underneath each tweet is already looking crowded, and I’m not convinced that adding another stat to the list will do it any favors.
Between changes to very, very long tweets, the revamped blue tick system and the promise of an ad-free subscription tier, Twitter has changed dramatically since Musk took ownership last year. You can bet more changes are coming down the line.