Twitter is testing a new feature to send notifications to alert users if tweets or topics about words they've searched for on the platform have been posted earlier.
According to developer Dylan Russell on Twitter, the new feature is named Search Subscribe, which is not yet available on twitter's official app, but Dylan has been able to activate the feature via the source code of twitter alpha.
With screen images shared by Dylan, the feature is a bell tag that appears next to the search rectangle in which the user writes the word/keywords they want to search, and when you press the tag, a notification will appear indicating that the user will get notifications of any new tweets that include the same keywords.
This feature is very similar to what TweetDeck offers to regulate Twitter usage on computers, as the service offers notification reception for any new tweet issued on a particular topic.
Dylan said in his tweets that the notifications did not reach him despite the activation of the feature, but attributed the reason that they were under development.
"The mechanism of action of the new feature is unclear, it is not understood whether the notifications will come in real time as soon as a tweet is posted with a key word that the user searched for, or whether it will arrive in a way that brings together a number of tweets posted to place them in their chronological order in front of the user," he said.
When officially available, the trial feature is expected to reach subscribers to the paid Twitter Blue service, which has a monthly subscription of $3, before arriving to the general public at a later date.
The Twitter app has begun work on developing a new feature for Android users, allowing them to select a certain part of the text of any tweet on the platform, as the text can be copied and pasted anywhere outside or within the app.
Researcher Jane Manchon Wong discovered Twitter's development of the new feature by using reverse engineering when examining various smartphone applications to identify new features before they are introduced.