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Newest Twitter Update Helps iOS Users Free Up Storage Space on Their Phones

A few days ago, Twitter rolled out a small but helpful update to iOS users. On their iOS app, Twitter has made it so that users will actually be able to see how much space is taken up by the various photos, files, and web data stored within the Twitter app. The update has also made it possible for users to begin deleting this information, effectively freeing up space on their device. For many Apple users, this new update is extremely helpful.

Twitter’s newest update is focused on making it a lot easier for users to manage the storage space taken up by their Twitter app and to even regain some of their devices internal storage by deleting cached data. For some users, this may free up a huge amount of internal storage space as regular Twitter users may have 1 MB or more filled with information that Twitter stores. Anyone with limited phone storage is sure to love Twitter’s update for this reason.

Prior to the update that Twitter has now implemented, users would have had to delete the Twitter app entirely and then reinstall to get rid of the cached information taking up so much of their internal storage space. The new update makes the process a lot easier allowing users to just go in and clear their cache whenever necessary. This update is especially great for iPhone users who have iPhones with limited memory as people trying to choose between apps or pictures, will now be able to free up space used by Twitter.

To clear the cached information that Twitter uses, start by updating the iOS app on your device. You’ll then be able to click on the gear icon to go into your settings. From there, simply click on Data Usage under General. There will then be two options, Media Storage and Web Storage. By going into either of these, you’ll be able to see how much data is being stored and you’ll be able to clear it, freeing up storage space on your phone.

Latest Twitter Update Helps Users Screen Out Abuse

Since Twitter initially began, it has faced problems with cyber bullying and harassment within the user base. Twitter has implemented further features that are now helping Twitter users screen out this abuse. As part of the latest update, Twitter has added new algorithms to help them catch abuse that is unreported and has extended muting features to make it easier to see the things you want to see on your timeline. With the newest features Twitter hopes to curb the abuse on their platform.

One of the biggest features introduced in this update is the extension of the muting feature that Twitter has provided for users. Now users can screen out abuse by muting different accounts or phrases directly from their timeline. They’ll also be able to choose an amount of time to mute different items for including options to mute for one day, a week, a month, or even longer. There are also some new filters that people can use allowing them to avoid accounts without profile pictures and verified phone numbers so that accounts made hastily with the intent to troll or abuse users can be blocked out.

In addition to this new feature, Twitter has created some new algorithms to help them identify abusive accounts and respond accordingly even when these accounts are not being reported. This is an important new feature that will allow Twitter to stop abuse that is going on without being reported at all. While these are still in the early stages of development, Twitter is hopeful that these algorithms will make it easier for them to track abusive accounts and limit the damage these accounts can do.

The new update is part of Twitter’s work to limit the abuse and trolling that goes on within their website. By allowing users to limit abuse and to get more of a response from Twitter after reporting abusive accounts, they are hoping to help build a much safer place for users to communicate with one another. Twitter will likely continue to update to help add new features that can curb abuse happening within the website.

Twitter to Launch Additional Features Targeting Harassment in the Following Weeks

On Monday, Twitter announced that Twitter users will be seeing a series of new features that will be used on the platform to limit abuse and harassment. Among the top feedback that Twitter received about the use of the website, was the fact that abuse and harassment makes Twitter a lot less fun on the whole. In a platform focused on the flow of conversation and opinion, such abuse halts the natural flow and discourages users from participating. For this reason, Twitter has renewed its dedication to weeding out this kind of behavior.

This week Twitter announced that they are going to be taking a completely new approach on abuse that occurs on their website. Over the coming days and weeks, they are planning to launch fixes to existing features and to add new ones to prevent abuse. These will include fixing the mute and block features and adding new ways to prevent repeat offenders from creating a new account when their account is suspended. By approaching safety on Twitter in a more aggressive way, the website hopes to break the pattern of abuse on Twitter.

One of the first changes to Twitter has already been rolled out, although it is a relatively minor one. Twitter will now allow users to report any Tweet that mentions them even if that user has blocked them on Twitter. This will prevent the common problem of people being unable to stop the flow of abuse from a user who hides behind the shield that blocking provides. While this isn’t too big of a change, it is a step in the right direction.

Preventing abuse and harassment on Twitter is of top importance to the company. Since they have received so much feedback about the abuse on Twitter and how inhibitive this can be, they are finally taking many steps to stop the harassment that is flowing through Twitter. While Twitter has tried some things in the past, they are promising much bigger changes in the future. By changing the climate for abuse and harassment on Twitter, they are hoping to make their website a place that is more welcoming to new and existing users.

Twitter Launches New Explore Tab on Their App

Yesterday, Twitter began to roll out a new feature on their app starting with iOS users. With the new Twitter update comes a brand new tab called Explore which replaces the previous Moments tab. This new tab groups a wide variety of features together to make it a lot easier for users to search for trends, popular topics, and the latest news. By adding a tab that groups many features, Twitter is hoping to have an app that is easier for people to navigate.

The new tab, placed between the Home and Notifications tabs, is going to include a number of different features that were previously spread around the app. Inside of this tab, users will be able to find trending topics, the search feature, live video, and moments that would previously be found under the moments tab. Twitter has stated that the purpose of this change is not to get rid of anything that the app already has but to make it so that everything is more organized and easier to find. As Twitter has long been facing problems with the organization of the app and the website, making an update like this should be a step in the right direction.

This update comes after months of testing various organizational versions of the Twitter app. Twitter has been focused on making it easier for users to move through the site in a hope that this will encourage new users to stick with the site and to start using it more. After many different tests, Twitter discovered that the Explore tab was what most of these people seemed to like most as it put a lot of information and features in one place.

As this new section has replaced the Moments tab, many people see the switch as a step away from the importance of Moments within the app. Instead, it seems clear that Twitter will be prominently featuring live broadcasts. Since Twitter has spent a lot of money and time on securing live broadcasts of popular events, focusing more on these broadcasts is the next step toward utilizing these within their platform.

An Edit Button for Twitter? It Might Happen in 2017

While Twitter made a lot of different changes during 2016 one of the main criticisms by users was the fact that they didn’t make changes on highly requested items, such as an edit button that would allow users to make changes to tweets after these had been posted. Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey decided to start the new year by asking users what they want to see on Twitter. Of course the edit button was one of the main things to come up as usual. What is new, is Dorsey’s response to the idea.

In responses to several different Tweets about the edit button, Dorsey asked further questions about what users would like to get from this button and whether they wanted long term editing or just short term. He suggested that the edit button was something that he had been thinking a lot about and talked about perhaps allowing a short window of time for editing or a revision history for edits done later on. This makes it seem like Twitter is taking the possibility of this update seriously.

This has of course caused a great deal of excitement among Twitter users just because this is something that they have been asking for regularly. Users have stated that the edit button is necessary to help fix grammar and spelling mistakes and also for clarifying information that may get misconstrued while trying to stay within the 140-character limit. At this time, users are able to delete tweets, but often this is a bit of a hassle for a misspelled word.  

Now that Dorsey has admitted that the edit feature is something the site is beginning to consider, many people are starting to get excited over the idea. Some are theorizing that Twitter might be more open to user suggestions due to a disappointing year in 2016. With low user growth and job cuts within the company, it is clear that Twitter has been looking for changes. The edit button just might be a good one to add as it is a feature that competitors including Instagram and Facebook already have.  

Twitter Finally Launches Internal Live Video

While Twitter was early to start on the development of live streaming within their social media platform, they just now have integrated this live video into Twitter itself. Twitter users can now broadcast live video directly from Twitter without installing Periscope or even having a Periscope account. This new update puts Twitter’s live video feature within Twitter in a way that makes it much more convenient to Twitter users.

In the past, there was some reluctance toward live streaming on Twitter as the process was over complicated. Users had to install the Periscope app and use this app to create live streaming videos. These would be shown on Twitter as well, but people watching the broadcasts couldn’t interact with the video. The new update changes this to make it so that Twitter users create live videos directly from Twitter.

One of the big changes with the update that rolled out earlier this week was not only to make it so that the video could be streamed live directly from Twitter, but also that viewers of the video would be able to interact with it more. Members of the audience can now respond to the video by making comments and sharing emoji. Tweets containing live streams may also be retweeted and shared making them a whole lot more versatile.

By adding this live streaming to their platform, Twitter is finally joining other social media sites in real competition for the live video market. Despite their head start with the acquisition of Periscope, the app was losing momentum long before the new update. This is because other social media sites like Facebook and Instagram released live video updates that made the live video streaming an internal feature that was easier to work with. Now that Twitter has integrated Periscope within its own app, they may be able to become more competitive in this area once again.

Twitter Takes a Stand Against Online Abuse

It is no secret that Twitter is a platform that has been experiencing a lot of problems with online abuse. A lot of recent data has come out showing just how badly this problem has started to effect Twitter users. In many cases, this causes Twitter users to leave the platform entirely.  In response to these problems, Twitter has started to roll out an anti-harassment update that will hopefully be the first step to getting control of this situation.

Twitter’s new update influences a few specific pieces of Twitter. Centered on the fact that many users said that abuse coming to them through notifications was the most disheartening, Twitter has updated its “mute” feature. While this feature previously made it so that specific accounts could be muted to specific users, it has now been extended so that users can select keywords and phrases that they don’t want to see in their notifications. This does not remove these items from the news feed yet, but does limit personal attacks. It also provides a way for users to drop out of ongoing conversations where they have been tagged.

Another update has been made directly to the way that tweets can be reported as abusive. Twitter is working to make this process much simpler by allowing users to choose from a few options to further elaborate on why a post is abusive. They have also trained their support teams to help them deal with harassment reports in a quicker and more sensitive way. The goal is to make the process of reporting tweets faster and more friendly.

Twitter’s new update is just one step toward getting control of abuse that happens over this platform. This social media site faces a common problem that comes from allowing open discourse and free speech while trying to avoid creating a hostile environment for everyone. The goal of this update is to help to make Twitter a much more welcoming platform. While they don’t expect major changes to come as a result of this first update, they are hoping that it will be the first step to much bigger changes.

Using Social Media to Predict Elections May Be a New Trend

After the surprising results of the election on Tuesday, many people were blindsided as the results were quite different from those predicted by traditional polls before the election. With this stunning turn of events, many have started to question the validity of traditional polls, turning instead to different ways of predicting upcoming results in elections. Some are suggesting that social media could be the best way to predict elections in the future.

Prior to the election, several articles came out suggesting that Trump would actually make a stunning win in the election. These articles used evidence gathered from different sources all connected to social media. In one case, a professor said that an algorithm he created predicted a win by Donald Trump. This algorithm utilized data available from Twitter that showed what people were talking about prior to the election. He had used this algorithm before with 95% accuracy to predict the 2013 Australian federal election and the 2015 Queensland election.

In another example, an artificial intelligence system predicted that Trump would win the election as well. This particular AI system takes a wide number of data points from Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to create predictions on who will win. Earlier in the election process, the system was able to predict correctly the results of the presidential primaries. Since 2004 when this AI system was created, the system was able to predict the last three U.S. presidential elections. Now has correctly predicted this one as well.

There has been a great deal of success with just using social media alone as a predictor of who will win the election. While polls failed miserably at predicting the results of the election, other systems were able to predict the results by comparing the number of pro-Trump and pro-Clinton tweets in the months leading up to the election. There are some small failings in this kind of a predictor since computers are not always best at judging whether a tweet is for or against a specific candidate. Still there was much more success in predicting Tuesday’s election this way than through polling.

Analysts monitoring social media were able to predict the outcome of the election months in advance, while polls were still predicting an easy win for Hillary Clinton. Their data suggested that those who were responding to the polls may not be answering truthfully when confronted by a stranger on the phone. While these people may not have claimed to be voting for Trump or may have refused to answer polls, on social media they were able to speak their mind. This evidence suggests that in the future, social media may actually be the place to start when attempting to predict elections.