Twitter ready to launch long-form Notes feature in ‘the coming weeks’: report

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter is ready to launch a new long-form blogging feature named Twitter Notes in “the coming weeks,” according to a report from TechCrunch.

Leaks and reports of such a feature have been circulating for months. In May, app researcher Jane Manchun Wong shared screenshots of a feature named either Twitter Notes or Twitter Articles, that let users write formatted blog posts complete with pictures, links, and embedded tweets. More screenshots of the same tool were shared in April by another app researcher, Nima Owji, which showed options for users to share posts with their followers, or create standalone links for posts to share elsewhere on the web.

According to TechCrunch, the feature is currently called Notes, and is being given a prominent place in beta versions of the Twitter app. But while the feature is reportedly ready to launch in the coming weeks, it could be delayed by further experimentation.

Adding long-form writing to Twitter could drastically change the character of the platform, which has long been defined by short-form writing (at first, tweets were just 140 characters in length, before doubling to 280 characters in 2017). On the other hand, Twitter is arguably already full of longer written screeds, shared in the form of threads of tweets or tweeted screenshots of others’ articles or users’ own writing (usually captured in the iOS Notes app).

By incorporating long-form writing into its platform, Twitter could potentially capture more of the value of these posts. Publishing articles or notes directly to Twitter would make the text indexable for marketing and search purposes. It could also dovetail with the company’s nascent Newsletters feature. In 2021, Twitter bought newsletter firm Revue to take on rivals like Substack and has since integrated Revue newsletters into users’ Twitter profiles. However, the feature does not yet seem to have achieved wider popularity.