CEO Elon Musk has stated intentions for Twitter to no longer show the device a tweet was posted from, whether it was an iPhone, an Android phone, or Twitter’s web client, amid his continual spitballing of new features for the social media network he unwillingly purchased. Musk said on Twitter that the company will “finally cease adding what device a tweet was made on,” calling the function a “waste of screen space & compute.”
Nobody really even understands why we did it, he continued.
And we will finally stop adding what device a tweet was written on (waste of screen space & compute) below every tweet. Literally no one even knows why we did that …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2022
So, three things, then. First of all, it is unknown if this change will truly occur. To put it mildly, Musk’s takeover of Twitter has been tumultuous, and the launch of the Tesla CEO’s most prominent new feature, paid verification, had to be postponed due to significant issues. You can’t be sure a new feature is going to launch at Twitter until it really does, according to Musk’s management of the company.
Second, there are several good explanations for “why we did it.” The creator of the hashtag, Chris Messina, thinks that offering a “status indication” to display whether a tweet was made from a desktop or mobile device was an useful approach to increase awareness for hitherto third-party Twitter applications like Tweetie and TweetDeck. And Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, concurs. He simply responded, “Messina is correct,” in response.
It was a useful way to provide visibility via attribution for third party clients, like Tweetie (which was acquired and became the Twitter iOS app) or Tweetdeck (RIP).
It was also a useful status indicator (e.g. whether the tweet was sent via desktop or mobile).
— Chris Messina ? (@chrismessina) November 14, 2022
Thirdly, and maybe most significantly, Twitter’s ability to display the type of device that submitted a tweet is a delightful feature.
To read our blog on “Recent Twitter cuts from Musk: third-party content moderators,” click here.
