What is a Twitter thread?
A Twitter thread, also known as a tweetstorm, is a series of linked tweets posted by a single person.
Instead of limiting your message to a 280-character tweet, you can use threads to tell a story or share information over several tweets.
Twitter threads are confusing, and for a reason. This is a feature that Twitter developed only after users started making them ad hoc. Twitter famously limits how long tweets can be, so users came up with a solution: posting a bunch of consecutive tweets.
In ancient times (think 2012), people would create threads by writing a bunch of tweets and adding a number to the end so readers would know in which order to read them. Twitter later added official support for threads. Now, you have to reply to your first tweet with another new tweet and then another reply. Even with this functionality, it is confusing to both create and read threads.
Twitter knows that creating and reading threads isn’t an ideal experience, which is why the company announced Notes, a feature that could replace Threads (opens in a new window), but which is still widely available. Not Available. Notes lets you post long messages almost like a blog. It’s a pending idea, but as of this writing, it’s only available to a small group of people and there’s no official timeline for a wider release. Also, there are benefits to threads that go unnoticed. You can add new messages to a thread over time, and threads appear more frequently in Twitter’s algorithmic timeline as you add to them.
If you don’t have access to frequent notifications and want a better experience with threads, two apps are possible: TapFill and ThreadReader.
Create an entire thread at a time with Typefully
Creating a thread in Twitter isn’t rocket science, but there are a few tricks to getting it right. You have to remember to reply to the latest tweet every time. And since there’s no way to view and edit all posts in a thread before hitting Tweet, you have to be careful to read and revise your messages carefully to make sure That they are in logical order is an idea. Clearly connected to the next.
Typefully (opens in a new window) solves this problem by giving you a simple user interface for writing Twitter threads. Just write your thread. The character count is displayed as you type, and text that exceeds the character count for a tweet is highlighted in red. You can split separate paragraphs into tweets by pressing Enter twice. You can publish the entire thread whenever you’re ready.
There is usually a web app — no mobile version or browser plug-in. When you first visit Typefully, log in and sync your Twitter account. Then, you can easily create a thread.
You can add images or paste links as you go, and Typefly shows you a preview as you type.
High-fidelity mode allows you to see how your tweets will look on Twitter while you edit them.
As you can see in my very important test results (opens in a new window), generally works well. The free version lets you create threads and publish them quickly, while paid plans (starting at $10 per month) let you schedule threads in advance, view analytics, automatically schedule retweets, and more. Lets do something. The free version’s interface has links to all of these premium features, which can be annoying, but shouldn’t bother you too much if you just want to create threads.
Use Thread Reader to make threads easier to read
Reading threads on Twitter is annoying because Twitter doesn’t always display all the tweets in a thread at once. You can tap on different tweets and never be sure you’ve read the entire thread.
Enter Thread Reader (opens in a new window). This web-only service makes it easy to read any thread. You can use the thread reader in two ways.
First, you can copy the URL for the top tweet in the thread and paste it into the field at threadreaderapp.com. The thread reader then displays the entire thread as if it were a single article. The result is much easier to read than what you’ll find on Twitter.
Second, you can reply to any tweet in the thread with “@threadreaderapp unroll” and the thread reader’s Twitter account replies back to you with a link to the thread. You don’t need to create an account to use Thread Reader, but you can create an account to collect all the threads you’ve enrolled in this way.
An account allows you to subscribe to all threads of a specific Twitter user along with any unrolled threads on Twitter. Premium accounts start at $3 per month and let you export threads to PDF, automatically save threads to cloud services, and get real-time alerts for threads from your favorite authors.
The thread reader is not flawless. Due to API limitations, only recent threads can be “unrolled”, and the service cannot unroll threads from private accounts. Still, these kinds of limitations apply to any third party, and ThreadReader is valuable despite them. This is the best tool I have found for threading.
Speaking of Twitter idioms, make sure you know how to stay safe and secure when you’re using it. If you want more privacy, you can create a private Twitter circle or delete Twitter and your creepy tweets if it all gets too much.
Advantages of Twitter Threads
- Increase your research
Creating Twitter threads can help you increase your reach. This can be especially helpful in growing a small account that needs more followers. You can also attract customers to your business or increase product sales. - Tell a story
You can convey more information through a Twitter thread than a single tweet. Hence, they are perfect for storytelling. You can have a detailed conversation with your audience, share an experience or provide a historical account. Everything is made more accessible. - Use Twitter threads as an alternative to blogging
Twitter threads can be used to create short blog posts. Blog information can be tweeted as a single thread. Shorten the thread information and write an attractive first tweet, so that the audience is more willing to read your thread and visit your blog.
