Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced on Thursday that Twitter will be rolling out a new “view count” feature which will allow users to see how many people have viewed their tweet.
In a post on his Twitter account, Musk said that the decision was made because “over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply or like, as those are public actions,”. Adding a view count, he added, will show how “alive” Twitter is.
Musk compared the view feature to that of video view counts on Twitter and other platforms and revealed that the view count feature will be called “impressions”.
In a subsequent tweet, Musk explained that the impressions feature will be shown to all users, not just the user who posted the tweet.
The new feature is the latest in a series of changes that Musk has implemented since taking over Twitter in October.
One of those changes, implemented earlier this month, is a new authentication scheme for users. The new scheme includes a gold checkmark for companies, a grey checkmark for government accounts, and a blue checkmark for individuals.
Twitter previously froze its plan to charge $8 per month for blue check verification on accounts, in response to increasing numbers of fake and spam accounts.
Musk’s takeover of Twitter has also come with some controversy. On the day the sale went final, he fired at least four top executives at the company.
Later, Twitter laid off half its workforce, with tweets by staff of the social media company saying the team responsible for human rights was among those affected. Days later, key security executives resigned from the platform.
Last week, Twitter suspended several high-profile journalists who have been covering the company and Musk.
Musk indicated that the suspensions stemmed from the platform's new rules banning private jet trackers. Later, however, Musk reinstated the suspended accounts after running a Twitter poll asking users whether those journalists should be reinstated.
This week, the Twitter CEO posted a poll to his account regarding his future as the head of the company.
“Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll,” he wrote, adding in a second tweet he posted later, “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.”
After a majority of votes said Musk should step down, he announced, “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”