6 Twitter features that enabled Filipinos to join conversations on 2020

2020 is over. A lot happened last year and Filipinos talked about it all on Twitter where daily active users grew 29% year-over-year to 187 million, driven by global conversation around current events and product improvements.The following Twitter features made it easier for Filipinos to spark, join, and follow conversations:1. Send a Fleet (aka, a disappearing post)Twitter launched Fleets, which disappears after 24 hours, to help everyone feel more comfortable joining the public conversation. There are no Likes, RTs, or public Replies on Fleets, while replies only happen privately via Direct Message, so people can share their fleeting thoughts with less pressure. Whether one is Fleeting about his fave sports team or her fangirling moments, Fleets allow anyone join the conversation with less pressure and without overwhelming the followers’ timelines.2. Tweet with your voice Over the years, photos, videos, gifs, and extra characters have allowed people to add their own flair and personality to conversations. But sometimes 280 characters are not enough, and some conversational nuances are lost in translation.Twitter has been testing a new feature that will add a more human touch: the user’s very own voice. Authors have shared their stories, brands have a fresh take on connecting with their audience, and people being their raw, authentic, silly selves. Tweet with voice feature is available on Twitter for iOS, but everyone can listen to voice Tweets.3. Control who can join your conversation Your Tweet = your space. Twitter launched new settings to give people more control over the conversations they start by choosing who can reply; unwanted replies don’t get in the way of meaningful conversations.There are three options before you Tweet: 1) everyone (standard Twitter, and the default setting), 2) only people you follow, or 3) only people you mention. For Tweets with the latter two settings, the reply icon will be grayed out for people who can’t reply. People who can’t reply will still be able to view and engage, Retweet, Retweet with Comment, share, and like these Tweets.Tests found out that people who had experienced harassment were 3x more likely to use these controls. Around 43 million Tweets were seen and created with conversation settings and over half of these use the “people I follow” option.4. Follow over 5k TopicsLast year, Twitter launched Topics – so everyone can see the most relevant and interesting Tweets about what they care about and let the conversation come to them with a single tap.When you choose to follow a Topic, be it on sports, celebrities, or even school subjects, Tweets from a whole host of accounts that are experts, fans, or anyone who just talks about that thing a lot will appear on the timeline. Now, people can follow over 5,000 Topics with new Topics added every single week ranging from Astrology to Stocks. As of now, around 70 million accounts are following Topics. The most followed Topics to date are Soccer, Rap, and Food.5. See the full conversation with Quote TweetsTweets about a Tweet also added to the conversation, so this feature was made even easier by showing all Quote Tweets, in their own timeline, in the Tweet detail view. This is available on Twitter for iOS and Android as well as twitter.com globally.6. Read before Retweeting This year, Twitter encouraged people to read an article before they Tweet it. Hence, a prompt was made to help people to do exactly that. With these reminders, people who Retweet articles now open them 33% more often before sharing. Available on Twitter for iOS and Android globally.