By Lauren MacEwen

Twitter likely had the most significant updates in 2017, affecting its users in both a positive and negative way.

Based on recent information from SocialFlow, click through rates on Facebook compared to click through rates on Twitter are down 44 percent. In October, it was 4.5 clicks on Facebook per 1 click on Twitter. Now it is 2.5 clicks on Facebook to every 1 click on Twitter, and this number is continuing to fall. Clearly these numbers are for mainstream links as Facebook does not allow links to adult content. What it shows is that Twitter is coming up — and Facebook is going down.

Here is a list of the major updates on Twitter from 2017.

Threads: Twitter released the ability to take multiple tweets that are part of one coherent thought and stitch them together in what is called threading. Now it is easy to see all the tweets that are in one single train of thought. This has become one of the most unsung but most well received updates of 2017,

280 Characters: Changing tweets from 140 characters to 280 characters was very controversial. Most people were not happy with the update, liking the brevity of the original 140 character tweet. Though most people still tweet in under 140 characters, the 280 character limit does seem to be appreciated for longer sentences which no longer require nonsensical truncation.

Ad Transparency: Though Twitter ads have never been terribly successful, their new transparency policy has been well received. Now you can see how long an ad has been running, the creatives associated with the campaign, and the targets. It is now easier to report offensive ads, or simply that you don’t like them. This is in response to political ads run during the election.

Hide Sensitive Content in Search, AKA “Shadowban”: This is the big one that has affected the adult industry the most. Twitter added a search setting that automatically sets everyone’s Twitter to hide sensitive content in search. For many accounts, this has significantly limited tweet reach.

Read a thorough article on the “shadowban” and how to fix it.

Safety Protocols: Twitter banned terms like #upskirt. It is part of their new safety initiative to prevent non-consensual sexual content, violent content, threats and hate speech from being on the network.

API: The newsfeed is now more organized by the API. Though you still see tweets in chronological order, you see more tweets in the “what you might have missed” category, as well as weighted priority to accounts that you engage with and that engage with you. They have not gone as extreme as Facebook or Instagram, but it has changed the potential tweet reach for accounts that don’t engage with their audience. You can turn this off by going into your settings and unclicking “show the best tweets first.”

New Look: Twitter adopted some of the stylings from Tumblr. They added the “night mode” which lets you turn the interface from light and bright to a darker appearance.

Personalized Controls: You can now mute threads you are uninterested in being notified about. This is an alternative to blocking someone and has reduced the number of blocks by 40%. You can also mute and filter keywords. They also added a quality filter that filters out duplicate tweets, automated tweets, and tweets deemed lower quality. You can turn this off through your notification settings.

Circle Avatar: Twitter made their avatar look a little more sleek by changing the shape from a square to a circle. This is also more inline with what other social networks, like Facebook, are doing.

New Look: Twitter updated its look, most particularly on the app, to be a little sleeker. Some notable changes are replacing the reply arrow with a speech bubble. Engagement counts are now updating in real time.

Twitter has been a major marketing source for the adult industry. For the majority of 7veils.com clients it represents the largest traffic source from social media. Our strategy, influencer targeting and hashtag SEO, 7 Veils has been able to effectively capture Twitter traffic. With many of these updates, and with the updates to Facebook that are hurting page impressions, we may see Twitter’s numbers increase even more. That is good news for Twitter for 2018.