Twitter on Monday released an update for its Android app, which brings the much-touted dedicated WhatsApp share button. The microblogging service has also been seen experimenting with a new way to retweet.
Media reports have been claiming that Twitter was testing the WhatsApp button feature in its Android mobile app for some time. However, the newest update (on June 23) to Twitter's Android app rolls the feature out to all users. The new dedicated WhatsApp share button on the Android app is located at the bottom of a tweet, alongside the existing share button which gives options to share on Gmail, mail, message, BBM, Facebook, Google+, Facebook Messenger, and Skype, as well as (funnily enough) WhatsApp again.
The Next Web citing some tweets suggested that for some users the dedicated WhatsApp button appeared on top of the screen, placed alongside the search icon.
Notably, the Google Play listing of the Twitter official app notes that the recent June 23 update brought several improvements and bug fixes, and does not mention anything about WhatsApp button.
The new WhatsApp dedicated share button in Twitter's Android app can be considered the latest move to push the microblogging service's lacklustre growth, as we reported earlier, at least in a country like India.
It's worth noting that in April, WhatsApp claimed to have over 500 million active users, and revealed that India was its largest market.
Twitter reportedly is also testing a new way to retweet that offer users more space to comment while retweeting a tweet or even quoting a tweet of another person. The feature is said to be called "retweet with comment" and was reported by Mashable. The unannounced "retweet with comment" will likely retweet a message as an image, which will leave the complete 140-characters to add own thoughts.
Notably, a similar embed retweet feature was discovered earlier this month, reported by The Next Web. With that method, users had to copy and paste the link of a tweet into the tweet they are making. This will give the user all 140 characters to work with while essentially retweeting another tweet. Followers will have to click to expand a tweet before being able to see the embedded tweet. The report notes that tweets embedded via the Android and iOS apps will be visible only as links when viewed from the web interface.
The two reports seem to be referring to the same embed retweet feature, and we are yet to see it roll-out to India. Until now, the retweet option did not offer any space for a user to add thoughts to another person's tweet. Earlier this month, Twitter website and apps got support for animated gifs.