Twitter Starts Testing a 'Status' for Tweets

pcmag.com:

Twitter is offering users a blast from the past with an experimental new Status feature.

Statuses used to be everywhere. AOL Instant Messenger let users set a status message that appeared next to their screen names, for example, and Myspace was mostly status updates back when the "s" was still capitalized. Now the "status" is about as relevant as those services.

Twitter is trying to bring statuses back—or at least it's toying with the idea of doing so.

"We are always exploring more ways for people to join the conversation and expression is key to that," a Twitter spokesperson says. "For a limited time we are testing a feature that allows you to add a status topic from a predetermined list to your Tweets to provide more context for your followers. So whether you are about to drop a hot Tweet thread, share your shower thoughts, or have a bad case of the Mondays, your Tweets can better convey what you are up to."

The spokesperson also says the feature is "being tested for a limited time with a select group in the US and Australia" on iOS, Android, and the web. (With the caveat that web users will only be able to view other tweets' Status; they can't select a Status for their own tweets.)

Twitter seems to be offering testers 16 statuses to choose from:

The available statuses are somewhat bizarre. Some of them—"Hot take," "Unpopular opinion," and "Traveling" being the most obvious—almost seem like they're intended to give Twitter users a way to filter out some of the most annoying kinds of tweets from their timelines.

Others, such as "Case of the Mondays," "Vacation Mode," and "Working hard, hardly working" would be more at home on a corporate messaging platform than a public social network. Most of the remaining options are