Elon Musk recently started responding to some Twitter users tagging him, and has been known to participate in conversations on the platform he now owns. In a recent conversation about improving Twitter’s UI, Musk responded to a DailyExpertNews employee’s suggestion and also stated that “several major UI improvements” are coming in January. As the current CEO of Twitter, Musk has made sweeping changes to the service as well as minor tweaks, some of which resemble experiments. Recently, Twitter started showing views and interaction stats for every tweet to show that while not many people are actively commenting or liking tweets, they are being read.
On Friday afternoon, Musk conducted a Twitter poll asking users whether to display the number of views to the left or right of the tweet UI. The new metric is currently displayed on the left and overrides the Reply, Retweet, and Like indicators. At the end of the polling period, 54.3 percent of users had voted to move it to the right, while 45.7 percent seemed happy with its current spot. The poll spawned several discussion threads about other UI tweaks Twitter might want to consider.
Two rows occupy crucial screen space. Maybe instead of RT’s, QT’s, Likes and Views icons could keep everything on one line? pic.twitter.com/kWWrPcNtOA
— Pranav Hegde (@PranavHegdeHere) December 23, 2022
DailyExpertNews staffer Pranav Hegde replied to Musk, pointing out the space wasted by text labels for Views, Likes, Retweets, and Quote Tweets below each tweet on the service’s mobile UI, suggesting that using icons could make them all fit on one line.
Musk replied in the affirmative, indicating that Twitter has already considered that, or will make this change in response to his suggestion. Other users who joined the discussion made additional suggestions regarding the use of screen real estate, while others pointed out UI bugs, and others joked about Musk’s habit of running polls and making impulsive changes.
Number of impressions of tweets should
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 23, 2022
The soon-to-be ex-CEO, who has vowed to step down after finding a suitable successor, has made numerous changes to Twitter’s functionality since the takeover, including a complete reinvention of blue identity verification checkboxes and an overhauled Twitter Blue subscription. He has announced that he plans to allow all users to edit tweets, and is working to increase the limit from 280 characters to 4,000, which would fundamentally change the way Twitter is used.