IT World • Created April 29, 2020 13:30

Twitter goes berserk, up, close and personal

On Wednesday morning Twitter posted, “DMs are fine. She just hasn’t responded.” This was not the end of it, as the official account @Twitter of the microblogging platform Twitter continued to respond –albeit in a playful witty manner – to interactions generated by the tweet. @seokjinsized, replying to @Twitter, said, “Fix your app” to which […]

Twitter goes berserk, up, close and personal

@Twitter

On Wednesday morning Twitter posted, “DMs are fine. She just hasn’t responded.”

This was not the end of it, as the official account @Twitter of the microblogging platform Twitter continued to respond –albeit in a playful witty manner – to interactions generated by the tweet.

@seokjinsized, replying to @Twitter, said, “Fix your app” to which twitter responded, “Fix your manners”.

The originating tweet has racked over 82,000 retweets and over 340,000 likes and 14,500 comments.

Twitter didn’t get chatty overnight. A look at the account tweeting pattern shows that it’s been on for a while now.

The month of April is filled with tweets like “Weird dream”, “Who’s up?”, and when Chance the Rapper asked fans which app they prefer between Twitter and Instagram, Twitter that wasn’t tagged in the tweet responded with “Twitter.”

On 23rd of April Twitter made a keyboard smash: “Ahhhhfdsjkhfjskhfjkldshfkljsdhfkjdhfkjlshdfkljsdhfjkdshfjksdhfjdksfhjkdshfjsdhfjkshfjksdfhjksdhfjksdfhjkdsfh

your turn.”

And it responded to users’ inquiries, “Are you drunk?”,  “Are you alright?” with more keyboard smashes.

Streaming Platform, @Netflix; Football club, @Atletico; Magazine @Variety; Tech company, @NvidiaGeForce among others jumped on the tweet with more keyboard smash responses.

In the last quarter of 2019, Twitter took these interactions with users offline by putting up billboards of users tweet.

Is Twitter having a meltdown or is this rebranding?

Twitter’s playful interaction with followers didn’t start recently, it just got more intense.

In 2018 a Tech journalist, Casey Newton,  asked why the change and Twitter responded with “Old bird, new tricks.”

In the ensuing thread, Twitter wrote: “We think it started with a DM battle between @leslieberland and @jack, as many amazing things at the company do,”  to which @leslieberland  responded with “Shhh, Twitter, shhh”.

Jack Dorsey – @Jack – is the CEO of Twitter.

Casey, in his report for Verge, attributed the change to Leslie Berland who joined twitter as Chief Marketing Officer.

He said, “I followed up with Twitter proper, and got a little more detail. The @Twitter account is run by the company’s marketing department, led by Leslie Berland”.

He added, “Berland spearheaded an effort to refine the company’s voice.”

This personal manner of interaction with users is reflected in the way it sends out educational information and messages that can be termed serious.  For instance Twitter collaborated with World Health Organisation,WHO, to respond to questions around the coronavirus pandemic – and they presented it to their users by asking questions in a way a user would.


The drive to interact more with the users seems to be paying up as tweets engagements on the account now reads in thousands unlike was obtainable prior to the reset.

Can this strategy work for your brand?

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