An activist investor came in (Elliot Management Corp) and pointed out that they had failed to innovate for 5 years and that their CEO had literally decided to go part time and move to Africa. Twitter's share price has been absolute trash for a long time and something needs to change. It has given them a massive kick up the arse and they're trying to demonstrate some new features and value.

It looks a lot like senior management at twitter was asleep at the wheel. Frankly though, I don't think that any of twitter's feature-a-like products are going to work, they don't have the scale of facebook.