Twitter on Thursday introduced a live cricket scorecard and extended its Communities feature to India by bringing the country’s first community focussed on cricket fans called Cricket Twitter – India. The updates from the microblogging platform come in the midst of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021 tournament that kicked off earlier this week and will go on until November 14. Twitter claims that it is already a known place among Indian cricket enthusiasts, with more than 75 million conversations about the game taking place on the platform in the country between July 1, 2020 and July 1, 2021.
The scorecard will appear on the Explore tab and live Events Page on Twitter during cricket matches to let fans follow the scores from the match in real time, while scrolling through tweets and following commentary on the platform. It will be available to all users in India on iOS and the Web and will also roll out to most users on Android.
“In the coming weeks, we’ll find more ways to make it easier for users to find relevant match content and join conversations with likeminded people,” the company said in a press note.
Alongside the scorecard, Twitter has brought its first community outside of the US, and it has been dedicated to Indian cricket fans. It is aimed to serve as a one-stop place to talk about all things cricket in multiple Indian languages.
In September, Twitter started testing its Communities feature in the US to let people connect with others on the platform to talk about the same things and interests they have. Communities on Twitter are started and managed by administrators and moderators who enforce Community rules that members must have to follow — alongside the general Twitter Rules.
Twitter is currently testing communities as invite only on iOS, Web, and Android mobile browser, with access on the Android app and more functionalities coming soon. The invites can be sent by administrators, moderators, and community members via direct messages.
Once invited, members can join the community and start talking with other members by replying to their tweets. Community members can also start their own conversations by posting community tweets.
Just like public tweets, anyone can read, quote, and report community tweets. People who are not a part of the community can, however, not participate in the conversation by replying to the tweets posted in a particular community.
Twitter has not yet allowed all its users to create communities on the platform. At the time of announcing the Communities feature, the company said that it would work closely with community members.
Nevertheless, the latest announcement suggests that Twitter is considering India as a key market for growing communities on its platform.