Twitter is testing a feature that lets you see how many times a user tweets per month. Reverse engineers spotted this in development about a month ago, but as of this morning, some Twitter users have shared that they have gained access to this feature.
For those of us who already know that we spend way too much time on the app, this feature feels a bit … intimidating. But it could probably be useful as a metric when determining whether to follow someone. If someone tweets thousands of times a month, maybe you don’t want them on your timeline — or if they barely tweet at all, maybe you don’t think it’s worth throwing them a follow.
“This is part of an ongoing experiment in which we want to learn how providing more context about the frequency of an account’s Tweets can help people make more informed decisions about the accounts they choose to engage with,” a Twitter spokesperson said.
Based on past studies, it’s not surprising that the general reaction to this feature among dedicated users is horror at how much we tweet. In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that 10% of Twitter users create 80% of the tweets on the platform. The study also showed that the median user on Twitter only posts twice per month. As of last quarter, Twitter has 237.8 million monetizable daily active users.
So, if you feel personally attacked by Twitter’s “tweets per month” test, you may be entitled to compensation. For legal reasons, that was a joke, although we assume Twitter’s lawyers are a bit preoccupied at the moment.
Update, 8/1/22, 6:55 PM ET with comment from Twitter.
