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Twitter On The Web Finally Gives Users A Dedicated Chat Box

Twitter On The Web Finally Gives Users A Dedicated Chat Box

By Daniel Golightly
July 16, 2020

Twitter is rolling out a new web UI that brings Messages to the forefront in a chat-dedicated box. The newly reported feature was announced by the company today via a tweet from its official support page. As noted in that message, only desktop users will notice the new chat feature. That likely comes down to the extra space afforded to larger displays.

The box for the chat appears in the Twitter web interface at the bottom right-hand side of the page. And, of course, it doesn’t appear at all if users are in the Messages tab.

What benefits do dedicated boxes for chats bring Twitter users on the web?

The benefits of a dedicated chat interface being placed in its own box in the web UI for Twitter are relatively obvious. But the biggest benefit is simply going to be a better flow for the site. As things currently stand, users who want to “slide into those DMs” — as Twitter puts it — need to go to the Messages tab. That takes users away from the primary Twitter UI. And that, more importantly, essentially takes them away from all of Twitter except for DMs.

With the new change in place, users can still chat in the DMs as usual. But now they’ll be able to keep their chats open and moving forward. In effect, they’ll be able to chat while still posting and commenting on Tweets. Most social media platforms use a similar arrangement.

Is this already here?

The new Twitter interface, the company says, is rolling out now. That means it isn’t going to be there for everybody just yet. There’s no clear indication as to exactly how long the roll-out will take either. So it could be some time still before many users see it. That’s setting aside the fact that Twitter has bigger things to worry about just at the moment.

As already pointed out above, this feature also won’t appear on the mobile app. And that’s for obvious reasons. Namely, it simply wouldn’t fit or be enjoyable to use. So only users who access Twitter on their computer or other large screen-enabled devices will notice a difference from this update.