Twitter wants you to share tweets instead of screenshotting them

Twitter is now testing a new “Share tweet instead?” pop-up so users may stop taking screenshots of posts on the platform to share elsewhere and start driving traffic back to Twitter with a proper link. This feature was noticed yesterday by researcher Jane Manchun Wong and other users reported seeing the same pop-up.

When you take a screenshot, Twitter will ask you whether you want to “Copy Link” or “Share tweet,” instead of just screenshotting the post. This is part of the company’s effort to bring more people to the social media platform, according to Jane Manchum Wong.

In July, she discovered that Twitter is testing a “Try Twitter” function by letting people follow tweets in the mobile app without having an account. She explained:

This test drive is public and requires personalization. Most of other actions like retweeting, liking, bookmarking, tweeting still require signing up / logging in.

While the company sees itself in the middle of a storm with Elon Musk deciding to buy Twitter, stepping back, and now saying he’ll buy it again, the social media platform keeps trying to engage more users while diversifying its income.

The Verge gives an interesting tidbit about why the company is testing this new pop-up. The publication says:

Screenshots of tweets end up reposted on the platform, but they also spread to all corners of the internet that aren’t Twitter, like Instagram stories and posts, TikTok videos, or group chats and other private messages. Images of tweets doing numbers off of Twitter is engagement the platform is losing out on. And visiting Twitter after seeing a screenshotted tweet elsewhere involves more steps than simply clicking a direct link.

BGR will report back when this function becomes available to all users. As of now, it doesn’t seem everyone gets a message after taking a screenshot of a tweet.

More tech coverage: Edit Tweet feature now rolling out to US users