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Twitter tests new ‘original tweeter’ label to highlight replies in threads

Twitter tests new ‘original tweeter’ label to highlight replies in threads

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Will the original tweeter please stand up?

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Twitter’s blue bird silhouette logo is seen on a black background.
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter is testing a new feature that adds an “original tweeter” label to tweets in a thread, allowing users to easily distinguish which tweets came from the original account at a glance, as reported by TechCrunch.

The new feature — which is said to be available to a “small percentage” of both iOS and Android users — is extremely bare-bones in its execution. It adds a gray “original tweeter” label below the name of the user, similar to the status indicators that the company started testing earlier this month.

While this likely won’t have a drastic effect on most Twitter users’ day-to-day experience on the site, it should be helpful for communications with larger personalities. Parody accounts and scammers with similar names and photos tend to gum up the comments of high-profile users, which can make it tough to decipher a genuine response from a troll trying to scam Bitcoin.

It remains to be seen if Twitter is planning to roll out the new labels to more users or if the current design will end up being the final implementation of the format, but at least the company is working on addressing the issue of clarity.