Musk says Twitter to add ‘view count’ for posts

by Maureen Breslin - 12/22/22 3:36 PM ET

The Twitter application is seen on a digital device Monday, April 25, 2022, in San Diego. The number of posts on Twitter containing racial slurs has soared since Elon Musk purchased the influential platform, new research shows. Analysts at the Center for Countering Digital Hate searched for English-language posts containing one of several different racial slurs. They found that the use of all of them went up in the first full week after Musk bought Twitter. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)

Elon Musk has announced on Twitter that the platform will be rolling out a “view count” feature, in which users will be able to see how many people have viewed their tweet.

Musk said that the decision was made because “over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply or like, as those are public actions,” and that it will show how “alive” Twitter is.

The Twitter owner and CEO compared the feature to that of video view counts on Twitter and other platforms. Musk also stated that the view count feature will be called “impressions”.

Twitter is rolling out View Count, so you can see how many times a tweet has been seen! This is normal for video.

Shows how much more alive Twitter is than it may seem, as over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply or like, as those are public actions.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2022

Musk later elaborated in another tweet, stating that the impressions will be shown to all users, not just the user who posted the tweet, as a similar feature already exists within the platform in which “analytics” can be viewed.

The announcement of the new feature with an unstated release date comes after Musk stated Tuesday that he will be stepping down as Twitter CEO once he finds a replacement.

He made that decision after posting a poll in which he asked if he should remain as Twitter’s CEO. The majority of respondents voted “no.”

“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams,” Musk wrote on Twitter.

Musk’s tenure as Twitter CEO has been fraught with controversy as the billionaire moved to slash Twitter staff, scale back on content moderation and change the platform’s user verification system to a paid model.