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Two 'inline' stories June 2015 - April 2016

Twitter app adding inline direct message sharing buttons to tweets

Twitter is rolling out a new ‘feature’ to its iOS app today, prioritizing Direct Messages in the timeline by adding a prominent icon inline to tweets in the timeline. Tapping the new Direct Message button opens a new message with one of your Twitter followers, linking the tweet from the timeline as the starting point of the conversation. In the blog post, Twitter says updates for the app are rolling out from today.

Changing the conversation: How Apple could modernize iMessage to be more powerful and easy to use

At this year’s WWDC, Apple devoted a lot of onstage attention to a revamp of the Notes app in both iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan. One of my favorite additions is inline web link previews. Just paste a URL, and Notes will turn the link into a preview bubble with a thumbnail for the page, as well as a title and description.

This got me thinking about the possibility of applying the same functionality to other apps. The most obvious place to start, in my opinion, is Messages. I’m constantly sending and receiving links through iMessage throughout the day, whether it’s to a web page, an image, or even just a tweet. Having to flip back and forth between Safari and Messages just to see what the link I’ve been sent is removes me from the conversation and slows down my workflow.

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