Twitter Begins Testing Co-Tweets, Which Could Prove to Be a Useful Collaborate Tool

Twitter has been rolling out new features, and one of the most intriguing upcoming ones are co-tweeets. Co-tweets are Twitter’s way of letting two people co-author one single post. The feature is not fully available as of yet, and is only being tested in some regional markets, such as the United States, Canada, and South Korea. 

"We’re continuing to explore new ways for people to collaborate on Twitter," a Twitter spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. "We’re testing CoTweets for a limited time to learn how people and brands may use this feature to grow and reach new audiences, and strengthen their collaborations with other accounts." 

The new feature will allow the original author of a tweet to select a co-author. That co-author must accept the request in order to be added as a contributor to the tweet. Anybody can see and engage in the tweet like a normal tweet, however, only the original author (not the co-author) will have some administrative privileges, such as pinning the tweet to their profile. Only the first tweet in a thread can be a co-tweet and co-tweets can include polls, GIFs, images, video, and links. 

Here’s how it works: One author creates the tweet by selecting the co-tweet icon. The author then sends an invite to another user to be a co-author, and they will receive the invite in their direct messages. The only people who can be co-authors are those that follow you and have a public account. If the prospective co-author accepts your invitation, the co-tweet is published to each account’s profile and to the timelines of their respective followers.

Twitter does not allow you to edit a co-tweet once the invitation is sent, so it is incumbent on the original author to use their words carefully otherwise they’ll have to delete the tweet and start fresh. The co-tweet can also be deleted in the event the prospective co-author declines the invitation. But there is no limit to the number of invites you can send and Twitter also allows you to block any accounts that send you co-tweet requests.

Co-tweets cannot be promoted and given that co-tweets are still considered an experimental feature, Twitter has said that it is still too early to speculate on whether co-tweets can serve as an alternative to promoted tweets in the future.

How could this help journalists? For one, it’s a surefire way to make sure collaborators are named when debuting work. It’s a good way to credit sources as well, in the event that a primary source or witness is able to take credit without putting themselves in danger. However, the truth is that the feature is still so new that there is no anticipating the exact benefits and consequences journalists may reap from this. There is bound to be more to unpack as Twitter continues to roll out and refine the feature.

“The new CoTweets addition is another indication that Twitter is thinking about how its platform could be leveraged in different ways beyond being a virtual town square or real-time news network,” said Aisha Malik, writing on the new feature for TechCrunch. Malik added that the feature “could also be useful for creators who want to showcase brand deals with companies.”

Co-tweets could very well go away, too. “At the end of this experiment, we may turn off this feature and any CoTweets that were created may be removed,” Twitter said.