Twitter started experimenting with live counters for interactions that count the number of replies, retweets, and likes received by individual tweets in real time. The feature is currently available to some users running the Twitter beta version 6.45.0-beta.599, though not everyone with that particular build of the Twitter Android app has access to the experimental functionality, Android Police claims. This state of affairs suggests that the San Francisco-based social media giant rolled out the live counters through a server-side switch, thus intentionally making them available to only a limited number of users. Another possibility is that Twitter is in the process of a server-side staged rollout, meaning all users of the latest beta build will receive the new functionality in the coming day once the process is completed. Finally, the third and least likely possibility is that the staged rollout is encompassing all Twitter users regardless of whether they’re running the beta build of the app or not, but that probably isn’t the case seeing how not a single individual running any stable build of the Twitter Android app reported seeing the new live counters in action.
The feature itself seems to be working as expected and refreshes approximately every second. Each change in the number of replies, retweets, and likes on any tweet is accompanied by a short animation showing the old figure being pulled up and the new one coming from beneath it. While the newly introduced live counters certainly use more data than the static ones, the difference in data usage likely isn’t too massive seeing how the counters only work for tweets that are fully displayed on a user’s screen. Refer to the GIF beneath this writing to see how Twitter’s new functionality looks in action.
Seeing how Twitter’s live counters are an experimental feature, it’s currently unclear whether they’ll ever make its way to the stable build of the Android app and if they do – will data-conscious users be able to turn them off. Regardless, more details on the matter and Twitter’s other UI improvements will likely follow in the coming weeks seeing how the company often experiments with its social media service.