A New Obsession: Tracking How Many People Read Your Tweets

As if any of us needed a reason to spend more time doing things online that are ultimately unnecessary, Twitter is apparently testing a new feature that lets individual users--and, it would seem, anyone else--see who views each Tweet receives.

Twitter itself is mum on the possible feature, but a friend of The Verge noticed the tweak on her account, and screen grabs clearly show how many views each of her Tweets have gotten. The images show the hit count in Twitter’s iOS client, so it’s not apparent if or when this feature might roll out elsewhere.


Credit: The Verge

You can already see how many times someone has “favorited” a Tweet, and Retweets are of course a handy way to gauge how popular a particular post might be. Thus, seeing a simple hit count might not seem like a huge deal, but it actually provides a powerful way to triangulate other users’ reactions to your Tweet.

For example, if no one views it, that tells you something, and if it has many views but few Retweets or Favorites, that tells you something else entirely.