Twitter is introducing a new public metric to gauge the popularity of posts. In addition to retweets, quote retweets, and likes, users can now see the number of bookmarks a tweet has received.
Developer Jane Manchun Wong, renowned for uncovering new app features ahead of their official release, had earlier reported about Twitter’s latest addition of bookmark counts in tweet details in February. Wong also observed a growing trend of public bookmark counts. “Just looking at porn tweets and it seems they have higher bookmark-to-like ratio,” she explained.
A little background here! Twitter’s bookmark feature was introduced in 2018. Before that, many Twitter users would “like” a tweet to save it for later. However, because “likes” are public, users would sometimes misinterpret a like as an endorsement of the tweet’s message. The bookmark feature solves this problem by allowing users to privately save tweets they may want to reference later.
Earlier this year, Twitter updated its mobile app to move the bookmark feature from a drop-down menu to a visible icon on the same page as each tweet, making it more accessible. Shortly after, Elon Musk tweeted that he planned to include bookmark counts in the total number of “likes.” However, it now appears that the two metrics will remain separate.
The inclusion of bookmark counts on Twitter has faced significant backlash, as many users deem the feature as meaningless. Furthermore, some have pointed out that Twitter’s growing list of social media statistics has led to cluttered tweet pages. Of particular concern to female users is the revelation that their shared photos have been bookmarked numerous times.
Retweets, quotes, and likes were already being displayed on tweets, while view counts were added in December following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company. With bookmark counts, there are now five metrics displayed on each tweet, further contributing to the platform’s growing collection of statistics.
Currently, this counter is only visible to iOS users on the tweet details page, but according to the company’s help document, Twitter has plans to expand the feature.
