Twitter slyly testing Related Tweets feature

And just like that, Twitter seems to be testing out yet another feature aimed to make going through the service a more immersive experience. This time, Twitter is keen on showing you tweets that are related to the one you’re viewing, letting you discover new tweets based on the same topic.

Twitter did admit in a blog post this week that the company keeps testing tweets and features on the service at any given point of time. This includes the desktop version as well as the mobile apps. The Next Web, this time, has spotted the Related Tweets feature lurking around the service.

Here’s how the Related Tweets feature might look for you (Image credit: The Next Web)

Like most test features of this sort, Related Tweets will only appear if you click on the time-stamp of the tweet. It will take you to the unique URL of the tweet that usually contains information like replies, number of Retweets and Favourites as well as the Related Headlines feature. Like the name indicates, Twitter will throw up similar tweets to the tweet you’ve been viewing in order to get you spending more time checking out similar stories.

Twitter will pick up keywords in the tweet that will let it pull up similar stories and will display the same. Of course, you can do the same thing by typing in the keyword into the Search bar and scroll through the same, but this new test could cut down on the time you spend searching for tweets drastically.

Twitter had also been testing the Related Headlines feature for a good while before it finally rolled it out to all. The feature lends context to tweets and is especially helpful if you need to grasp what the famous people of the service have been talking about. Related Headlines will show up links to stories that have embedded the tweet within them, lending context to the tweet itself. For example, if an actor on Twitter talks about being angry, checking out the feature, you’re sure to know what he’s talking about, thanks to headlines of the stories the tweet is in.

While both of these features seem extremely important from the point of view of a power Twitter user, they’re going to end up cluttering the tweet’s page. Twitter might need to set its priorities straight and take a call on which features stay and which go. If not that, it will have to take a call on what features appear when.