Twitter is giving high profile users the chance to ‘pin’ tweets to the top of a user’s stream for free-offering a new way of publicising announcements on the social network.
Being tested with high-profile users, such as politicians and musicians, the system will allow a tweet to be ‘pinned’ to the top of a stream for however long is wanted.
The pinned Tweet will be identified as ‘promoted’. The pinned Tweet will not be shown to users of the Twitter app or TweetDeck as it only appears on the browser version of the social platform. The feature can be found in a user’s analytics page on Twitter.
Pinning a Tweet with an image could help to boost engagement. Recent research by Twitter data scientist Douglas Mason found that adding photos, a hashtag, video or a quote greatly enhances the chances of a Tweet being Retweeted. Tweets with a photo attached averaged 35% more Retweets than those without and those with video were boosted by 28%.
“The fact is, people don’t engage equally with every Tweet,” says Twitter’s data editor Simon Rogers. “But now we can confirm that adding video, links and photos all result in an impressive boost in the number of Retweets.”