Social

Twitter is working on adding emoji reactions to tweets, similar to the ones available on Facebook, according to screenshots shared by reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong. The microblogging site could include emoji reactions such as Likes, Cheer, Hmm, Sad, and Haha. The emoji reactions are currently under development, and some reactions in the screenshot, especially Cheer and Sad were shown to be using a placeholder Heart emoji. Reactions to posts are also available on other social media platforms like LinkedIn.

The emoji reactions were spotted by reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane), who posted a screenshot on Twitter. The emojis look similar to the ones made available by Facebook on its platform. While the Haha and Sad emoji reactions are similar to the Facebook ones, Twitter may also include Hmm (makes-you-think) and Cheer emoji reaction. There seems to be no Angry emoji reaction coming to Twitter.

“We’re always exploring additional ways for people to express themselves in conversations happening on Twitter. We’ll keep you posted,” Twitter said in an email to Gadgets 360 about when it plans to introduce the new emoji reactions on the platform.

Twitter had earlier provided a preview of these emoji reactions, through a survey it conducted back in March 2021.

In other Twitter-related news, the microblogging site recently stopped accepting new applications for account verification that it had re-launched on May 20. Twitter had suspended the service back in 2017. Verified accounts get a blue badge on their profile to help it stand out from other profiles. Various accounts can request a verification badge include activists, influencers, journalists, news organisations, government officials, and more. Accounts requesting the verification badge should be complete, i.e. they should contain a profile name, profile picture, and either a confirmed email address or phone number.

Twitter is also reportedly beta testing a new font family called Chirp. It was first announced in January 2021 and, according to users, Twitter has started rolling out the font to its Web users. It is also speculated that the social media giant may have released the font for other platforms as well. The new fonts are Chirp Black, Chirp Bold, and Chirp Regular – part of the Chirp Sans family.


It’s an all television spectacular this week on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast, as we discuss 8K, screen sizes, QLED and mini-LED panels — and offer some buying advice. Orbital is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.