Twitter dives into crypto and blockchains with new hire, whole new team

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What you need to know

  • Twitter has hired someone to run a whole new team related to crypto.
  • The new team will focus on "crypto, blockchains, and other decentralized technologies."

Social network Twitter has hired someone to run a whole new team that will focus on crypto, blockchains, and more. But it isn't immediately clear why.

Tess Rinearson made the announcement in a tweet yesterday, saying that they will "lead a new team focused on crypto, blockchains, and other decentralized technologies." That will apparently not just mean cryptocurrencies, though — so maybe don't expect to be using your Twitter account to trade just yet.

Rinearson also says that the first order of business will be to work out how Twitter can support creators in a world that involves virtual goods and currencies — that likely means NFTs and whatnot. But what that will actually look like isn't yet clear.

Twitter diving into this kind of thing is undoubtedly an interesting move and it's fair to say that the social network is no longer just somewhere we go to see what our friends are up to. While arguably not the best iPhone app for reading tweets, the official Twitter app continues to grow — the recent release of Twitter Blue shows how the company intends to make the app more than somewhere to read 280-character messages.

Whatever the new team is set to work on, all eyes will be on it and Twitter to see what comes as a result of this move.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.