In a world that constantly checks what’s in and what’s not, we love to be on the edge. We’d like to dive into what’s new right away; be the first. So when we heard about becoming a Twitter beta tester, we thought: are they really considering this?

It would be a great opportunity to get the glimpse of what’s to come for Twitter, don’t you think? Well, that is now very much possible.

Twitter is opening their doors to people who can help them do beta tests with their future features. They want to know how it would fair to people who often uses Twitter, as much as they want (as experts) to test it themselves.

This sounds like a really good opportunity. It doesn’t only give you the glimpse of what is to come, but you could speak in behalf of the entire Twitterverse.

So how can you be one?

Becoming a Twitter Beta Tester

So, you’re interested in becoming a Twitter Beta Tester. That’s actually a great news as the social media platform is looking to hear what the users have to say for their future features.

The process is simple; getting chosen is not. But we can all give it whirl, don’t you think? After all, social media has an even playing field.

To apply for a spot, you simply have to fill out their Twitter Prototype Program Application Form wherein you would need to indicate your Twitter handle, and answer a few questions on your Twitter usage or habits. Thinks includes content that you like, dislike, and other suggestions you have.

Once you have sent your application, you will receive an email if you have been shortlisted and included in the pool of testers.

Twitter has a separate application for testing called twttr. It’s their prototype app where the possible new features will be used and tested by the accepted applicants. Users can then get a first-hand experience on what’s about to come in the social media application.

What Twitter is Testing

Twitter has opened this opportunity to users to test out a possible new feature for the application.

Currently, they are studying a new way on how to make conversations more engaging by making it easier to track replies and comments on a tweet.

The future of Twitter conversations look like your Facebook comments. No more engagement states such as the number of likes and retweets. All you can see is who’s replying and their reply. It also looks a lot like Facebook comments because the comments come in tiers or a sort of hierarchy and, thus, they are indented accordingly.

But what makes this replying scheme more unique is that they are color coded. Twitter has set or assigned different colors for the original commenter or poster, and (to further differentiate) a different color for those you already follow. According to Twitter, this can give users a visual cue on which is which, and who is who.

Twitter believes that making these visual cues for easier recognition would convert to a higher engagement rate among users. This is something that Twitter has been struggling with and, thus, failed to capitalize.

Whether this will be pushed through or not is still something we have to find out in the next few days. As for Twitter Beta Testers, they’re lucky to have witnessed this technological breakthrough.

Features We Want To Test

Let’s give credit where credit is due; Twitter really is doubling their efforts to make users more comfortable with the platform. By creating features to bring in engagement, users can now be very much connect more on Twitter.

But let’s face it: there are many other features we want to get a hold of. Features that we’ve been begging Twitter to have since. With the introduction of their Twitter Prototype Program, wouldn’t it be cool to test out the features we want to see from the app?

One of which is the long-awaited Edit Feature. We’ve been looking for (even begging) for the edit feature since. We know why Twitter still doesn’t have an edit feature, but this is one feature almost everyone is looking for.

Currently, we have no way of rectifying errors on a tweet. Users are forced to either delete their tweet and retype it, or add another tweet to insert a sort of erratum. Other than that, Twitter seems to have no plan whatsoever to add an edit feature. We can keep hoping, but not keep our hopes up on this one.

We’ve mentioned quite a few other features we want to see from Twitter and so far, we haven’t seen them surface yet.

Like a Scheduled Tweet feature perhaps? It would be nice to try this feature out for beta testing so we’ll know if this is really important or not. Although this can be done via third-party social network management apps, but we can’t do this on Twitter. What we have is just to save the tweet as draft but there’s a big chance you’ll just totally forget about it.

The Possibilities are Endless

Possibilities are really endless with Twitter. We can hope for so many other features in the future and we might just test them ourselves and finally see them implemented in the application.

We once wished there would be a blocking or filtering option for some keywords or hashtags. And sure, Twitter took a step to accomplish that. Right now, we can mute and block people and words and phrases. And, yes, hashtags, too!

Let’s consider that as a success on our end. To think that it all started with a simple wishful thinking and now, it is a fully-implemented feature. That all means one thing: the possibilities are indeed endless if we push for it.

With these little successes we have in showing our power as users, we know that our voices are heard. And with that, we can improve Twitter with all the right changes.

All we could hope is that the other social networking giants will follow suit and come up with something like the Twitter Prototype Program.