Twitter updates iOS, Android and Web apps to offer conversation threads on …

Popular social networking service Twitter has updated its iPhone and

Android apps, as well as the Web interface to allow users to easily

discover and follow conversations.

Conversations are a major part of

the Twitter experience as it’s essentially how users interact with each

other and build threads around a particular topic of interest. While

Twitter’s native apps allowed users to track and follow conversations if

they happened to appear in their timeline, by tracing back from an

individual tweet, the apps did not make conversations an integral part

of the users’ timeline.

Following the

update,

up to three tweets that are part of a conversation will appear

connected with a blue coloured vertical line. The entire conversations

thread can be opened by just tapping on one of the tweets and users will

even see replies from other people who they don’t follow.

The

updated apps also allow users to share conversations over email with

anyone. The updated iPhone and Android apps also let users share

individual Tweets over email, and the Android app lets users share

tweets via direct messages (DM), as well. This feature was only

available on third-party apps, previously.

The update also brings

the ability to report individual tweets for abuse or spam directly from

Twitter to the Android app and the Twitter Web interface. The feature

was already available on Twitter for iPhone but will be rolling out

gradually to other users.

The update also reduces the size of the

Twitter Android app for entry-level Android smartphones with limited

storage, such as the Samsung Galaxy Y, HTC Explorer, Micromax Bolt and

others. For these devices, the Twitter app is now less than half the

previous size, making it much faster to download and will leave more

space for other apps, which will come in handy on phones with limited

internal storage.

While the update makes it easy to spot

conversations in the timeline, it changes the order of conversations from

reverse chronological order (newest first) that experienced users are

used to in third-party apps and switches to a ‘newbie-friendly’ oldest

tweet first format. It also makes conversations inconsistent with the rest of the tweets in the timeline.

*http://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/twitter-updates-ios-android-and-web-apps-to-offer-conversation-threads-on-timeline-ability-to-share-411848