Twitter is reportedly testing a new feature called "Retweet with comment" that reserves 140 character space in a tweet while quoting the original post.
Twitter, the renowned micro-blogging service, is continuing its experiments to improve the overall user-experience on its site with a new feature called "Retweet with comment." The latest addition, which is only available to a small group of users, gives more tweet space even as the user quotes the original tweet. The "Retweet with comment" feature, as the name suggests, includes the original tweet while users share their thoughts in full 140 characters.
The feature was first spotted by Mashable and confirmed by other media sources. The tech blog also grabbed a screenshot of the feature in action from head of product communications, Carolyn Penner's profile. According to the report, the feature is likely to replace the "Quote Tweet" that pastes the original tweet in the comment in a text format, eating up space from the 140-chars limit, TechCrunch reports. With the new feature, users need not worry about the word limit as they get the full 140 characters along with an image of the original tweet.
This is not the first time Twitter has tried to change the way tweets are composed and appear on users' timeline. Earlier this month, the social network secretly rolled out a new feature to iOS and Android that lets users embed tweets inside a new tweet. The feature is quite similar to the one spotted this week with a few alterations. The new feature looks like a more polished way to embed a tweet with just a click of a button, instead of copying the permalink and pasting it in a new tweet window.
While the new feature can be a useful addition to Twitter users, some have expressed their displeasure with the change.
The new feature appears only on the mobile version of the service and is unclear if it will be released. Considering Twitter is working to improve the feature from embedding a tweet to just a single "Retweet with comment" button, the chances of a fully fledged release in the next update are promising.
