According to a well-known social media leaker, Twitter may be developing its own Reddit awards. Jane Manchun Wong, a security researcher who was honored by Forbes last year for “uncovering previously disclosed functionality on applications like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook through her extensive digital detective work,” is the source of the rumor.
What’s to Come
Wong tweeted what looks to be a screenshot of the upcoming Twitter Awards feature earlier this month. The suspected feature appears quite similar to Reddit’s own awards system. Reddit users can use Reddit Coins to reward posts or comments they enjoy. What looks to be Twitter’s equivalent of Reddit Coins, in which a gold coin bearing the Twitter logo can be seen in Wong’s tweet.
All the Planning
To use Reddit nomenclature, the listed accolades seem to be a combination of Reactions and Medals. If Wong’s assertions are true, it appears that this functionality was created prior to Twitter’s official takeover by Elon Musk. Paywalled video, paying for verification, suspending accounts for promoting other social media platforms, and other novel concepts are just a few of the recent innovations.
If you are familiar with Reddit, you will see that this is extremely similar to what you see there. You shouldn’t be shocked by this revelation because Twitter frequently rolls out new features. The rumored feature is pretty similar to Reddit’s present rewards program. Reddit users can reward posts or comments they like with Reddit Coins. Whatever the case, it is still too early to predict whether this feature will be included in the final product. New features are always being developed by businesses, but whether or not they end up in the final version of the service is a very different story. Additionally, it’s unclear if this functionality will be accessible to everyone or only to Twitter Blue users.