Twitter is slowly rolling out a public view count for tweets, replies, likes, and retweets as visible impression metrics. Users were always able so see advanced data regarding tweet activity for their own posts, but activity numbers for other posts were hidden. The only information shown on every tweet was the number of likes, comments, retweets, and quote tweets. View counts were displayed on tweets with video, but tweets containing only text, links, or images had no such public data.
Following the change, users can quantify how many people a tweet has reached, even if those users are not publicly liking, retweeting, or commenting on a post. The move was announced by Elon Musk, who is still running Twitter despite being voted to step down by users. “Twitter is rolling out View Count, so you can see how many times a tweet has been seen,” Musk tweeted. This is technically a new data point for tweets, as Twitter users were only able to see the number of impressions for their own posts, and not the actual views. Musk said in a follow-up tweet that he “Meant to say impressions,” but the official Twitter app does note the new number as views.
View Counts Will Provide Additional Insights
Twitter is an unusual social media platform, in the sense that most users don’t publicly interact with the tweets they view. A ton of Twitter users rarely even tweet on the platform. Instead, they just observe contributions from other users, sometimes without liking, retweeting, or commenting on the post. Over 90 percent of Twitter users read tweets without interacting with them, according to Musk.
With that in mind, Twitter’s new view count will help users determine how successful a tweet really is. It will also clarify which users have a large number of bots or fake followers — based on how many views a person’s tweet gets in relation to their follower counts. Additionally, people can easily see if their tweets are being shadow-banned or “deboosted” using the same logic.
Not all users will immediately be able to see a view count on tweets in their timeline, as Twitter is employing a slow rollout. When a user receives the update, they’ll see a tweet’s view count beside likes, retweets, and quote retweets. By tapping the view count, users will see a message explaining the new metric. The text explains views as the “times this tweet was seen on Twitter.” It adds that it may take a few minutes for the view count to appear after a tweet has been posted. Twitter‘s view count adds a new way to interpret a tweet’s success, and appears to be a key tool in Musk’s war against spam bots.
