Twitter Card Verification = Lame

We need Tweet Previews!!

The U/X Idea

Have the option to preview Tweets before they are blasted to the Twittersphere.

The User's Problem

The problem is that when posting anything - text, an image, an article, a link - there is uncertainty as to how it will show on Twitter. You can use the Twitter Card Verification, but you have to go to a completely different page. It's also not easy to do the card verification on mobile because again, you have to find and go to a different page. 

Some articles when posted show a full image, some show a small picture with text description.

Will the link be shown in its entirety or will it be shortened? If it’s shortened, what will it look like?

Slightly less important, though those wordsmiths out there might agree, text will break on different lines pending on what device you are using - mobile, tablet, desktop. Then there’s size differences such as iPhone 5 (yes, people still use this device. We even have a friend with an iPhone 4… how their phone stays charged without an external battery pack is beyond comprehension).

Where were we? Ah, yes! Different sized devices even in the same realm such as iPhone 6 vs iPhone 8 Plus or an iPad Mini vs an iPad Pro. This sizing and text placement issue is more relevant for how the content will display on websites websites, however it would be nice to see what the Tweet would look like on different devices.

Proposed U/X Change

Regarding the User Experience change - it’s simple! In the “Compose new Tweet” box, insert a “preview” button in-between the “+” button and the “Tweet” button as illustrated below.

The “preview” button has a lower-case “p” and is colored gray in order to place emphasis on the blue “Tweet” button.

If the preview button is clicked, the user will now see their tweet as it will be displayed to their followers. Adding in a preview selecter to switch between desktop, mobile, and tablet is optional. Sticking to just those three options is fine as there are too many devices out there to provide previews for each device.

After previewing their Tweet, users have the option to go back and edit their Tweet or blast it out to the Twittersphere!!!

A number of other Social Media platforms should allow this as well, so this is not to single Twitter out. Regardless, previewing Tweets would be a nice feature to include that will better the User Experience, especially benefitting smaller companies that are normally unfamiliar with posting on Twitter.

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