Twitter Inc. has been going through numerous changes since Elon Musk took over the social site in late October. Following the removal of the ability to see which device a tweet is sent from — because according to Musk “it was a waste of screen space and compute” — the company is now adding YouTube-like view counts on tweets to give users more insight into the reach of other users’ content.
“Twitter is rolling out View Count, so you can see how many times a tweet has been seen! This is normal for video,” Musk wrote on Twitter. “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.”
The feature was previously only available to the account that published the tweet showing impressions, engagement, profile visits, and more but now the platform will be showing some of this information to everyone who sees your tweet. However, according to the company, community tweets, Twitter circle tweets, and older tweets won’t have tweet view counts.
As for who counts as a viewer, a Twitter FAQ explains that anyone who views your tweet counts as a viewer even if it’s the tweet’s author.
Anyone who views your Tweet counts as a view, regardless of where they see your Tweet (e.g. Home, Search, Profiles, Tweets embedded in articles, etc.) or whether or not they follow you. Even an author looking at their own Tweet counts as a view.
It adds that in case a user looks at a tweet from both the web and on their phone, that would count as two views.
The feature which appears next to the analytics icon on each tweet is currently available on iOS and Android, with web functionality expected soon. However, not all users have access to it just yet, as it takes time for a rollout to hit everyone.
