Twitter to finally introduce pronouns to user profiles

Twitter is set to add the long-sought option to add pronouns to users’ profile pages.

As part of a sprawling design shakeup, the social media platform that boasts some 192 million daily active users will introduce a new ‘About’ tab on accounts.

Alongside options to add their date of birth, job title, current location and interests will be a dedicated section to list their pronouns.

The ‘About’ tab will be to the left of the already existing ‘Tweets’, ‘Tweets & Replies’, ‘Media’ and ‘Likes’, according to mock-ups seen by TechCrunch.

Twitter has not provided a timeline for the slated update, but did say it would be “coming soon”.

“The profile hasn’t been meaningfully updated since 2014, which is a little mind-blowing, considering how much both Twitter and the world have changed since then,” said Andrea Conway, the lead designer on Twitter’s identity and profiles team, in a statement.

“Today, we don’t give people a ton of ways to express themselves and, in turn, we limit the number of signals available to understand the quality of that account and help people determine who and what to trust on Twitter.

“Additionally, from a design perspective, we’re dealing with a serious lack of space on the profile, and we really want to change that.”

Alongside the ‘About’ tab, the company is also taking steps to reopen its public form to request verification, otherwise known as the blue tick, according to a blog post on Twitter’s website posted Thursday (20 May).

While it remains unknown at the time of writing how Twitter will launch the new support for pronouns, Instagram may have supplied a blueprint.

The social network rolled out a pronoun section on people’s bios last week.

Selected users can add up to four pronouns from a pre-selected list, which includes he, she, they, ze, xe, xem, ve, vir, vis, xyr and more, by hitting the ‘Edit Profile’ button.

For those whose pronouns are not on the pre-written list, Instagram said people can fill out a form to have them added or whack them in their bio for the time being.