Twitter tests icons for threads; to provide more context on hidden tweets

Twitter is testing icons on a thread of tweets indicating the author of the original tweet and more.

Back in April, Twitter was testing 'labels' on a conversation making it easy to follow or join conversations on the platform on conversation threads.

These labels would indicate when the ‘author’ of the tweet, the ‘mentioned’ user, or a person you are following replies on the thread of the conversation.

The current tests are on similar lines, but with visual icons instead of text.

The microphone icon indicates the author of the original tweet, @ specifies the mentioned user tagged in the tweet and the profile symbol with a tick shows it's someone you follow.

The microphone symbol looks like an exact rip-off of the microphone icon on Reddit indicating the author of the original post.

Icons instead of labels do make a thread of tweets less cluttered while improving the experience of reading a thread of conversation, when it comes seeing context of which tweet is whose.

Additionally, Twitter announced that they would be working on providing more context on tweets that say 'The tweet is unavailable'.

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Thee are several reasons why you could see 'This tweet is unavailable', instead of seeing the tweet. It could be a protected tweet, from someone who has blocked you, it was deleted and/or more.

Kayvon Beykpour, Product Lead, Twitter recently addressed the issue mentioning that most of such tweets are from accounts with protected tweets.

He added, "The fact that the “unavailable” message is showing with a placeholder row is recently changed behavior (as result of a different change) that is confusing. They should be hidden."

Not long after Twitter officially announced that they would be fixing this issue by providing more context as to why you're seeing that message in regards to that particular tweet.