Twitter starts rolling out YouTube-like ‘view count’ feature for tweets

Taking a cue from social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter has started rolling out view count for tweets, a feature that shows how many people have viewed a particular tweet.

Announcing this new feature in a tweet, Elon Musk wrote, “Twitter is rolling out View Count, so you can see how many times a tweet has been seen! This is normal for video.”

“Shows how much more alive Twitter is than it may seem, as over 90 per cent of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply or like, as those are public actions,” he added.

The Verge, an American technology news website, has reported that inside the app users can now see view counters alongside the number of comments, retweets, and likes.

However, not every tweet will have a visible view count, according to a Twitter FAQ. The exceptions include Community tweets, Twitter Circle tweets, and “older” tweets because the data for them won’t isn’t available.

As for what counts as a view, it seems like basically any time your tweet shows up on someone’s screen, even if it’s your own, as per The Verge.

Twitter says, “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.”

Further, viewing a tweet from the web and then looking at it on the phone would count as two separate views. Also, these views will be visible to everyone, not just the owner of the account.

This feature was initially announced by Musk on December 1 and back then the billionaire implied that he was trying to make the platform’s text and image posts like video posts, which already had public view counts.

As per The Verge, he also said that it’s meant to show how “alive” the platform is and that just looking at replies and likes doesn’t give you the full picture.