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Twitter stock is up on a bunch of news we already knew about

Twitter stock finished the day up more than 7 percent.

Jonathan Nelson, founder of Providence Equity Partners, and Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chief executive officer of Twitter
Jonathan Nelson, founder of Providence Equity Partners, and Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chief executive officer of Twitter
Jonathan Nelson, founder of Providence Equity Partners, and Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chief executive officer of Twitter
Drew Angerer / Getty

Twitter stock had a great day: Shares were up more than 7 percent on Wednesday, and the stock is higher than it’s been in more than two years.

Why is Twitter having a great day? It’s not entirely clear, though Twitter generated some headlines. In fact, there were three separate stories about Twitter products published in the last 24 hours, which is a lot for a company that isn’t known for launching new products with that kind of cadence.

Turns out, Twitter isn’t launching new products with that kind of cadence. Most of what we read about Wednesday was stuff we already knew.

First, Twitter CFO Ned Segal was on CNBC’s “Mad Money” with Jim Cramer Tuesday afternoon, and mentioned Twitter’s efforts to get more small businesses onto the platform. The CNBC headline accompanying the video reads: “Twitter CFO: We’re creating a subscription product for businesses to advertise on Twitter.”

That’s true, though it’s not new. Twitter first started discussing a subscription service for small business advertisers last July and launched it in November.

A second CNBC story, published Wednesday, carried the headline “Twitter is working on a camera-first feature that could threaten Snap.” We knew in January that Twitter was building a new in-app “Snapchat-style” camera to encourage more photos and videos — the news was first reported by Bloomberg.

The CNBC story did have some new details about Twitter’s content plans — it sounds as though the company will take user photos and videos taken through this camera to help create Moments around live events, similar to what Snapchat does with its Stories product.

But the bulk of the story wasn’t really new.

Twitter is also testing a new way to show people more tweets about breaking news events, according to BuzzFeed. The company will now highlight specific news events at the top of users’ feeds, which then lead users to a stream of tweets about those events.

Twitter was already doing this, just not for news. It’s been curating feeds around live sporting events, and highlighting them at the top of users’ feeds, since last summer. Now it’s adding news alongside sports.

Which is all to say that most of what we learned about Twitter today we already knew. But as Twitter investors will probably tell you, the reminder was appreciated.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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