Twitter is hoping to recreate the magic of Ellen Degeneres’ 2014 Oscar selfie during awards season this year with new app features geared toward celebrities.
The social network announced three celebrity-exclusive tools Thursday (Jan. 7), including the Twitter Camera, which can be used to create GIFs and videos within the Twitter app; Twitter Q&A, a tool that uses special hashtags to help stars field questions from fans; and the Twitter Mirror, a device for taking selfies and uploading them directly to the social network, according to Mashable. The tools are not yet available to all users.
The new star-centric features aim to put Twitter front-and-center during awards season, which kicks off Sunday in the US with the Golden Globes.
Two years ago, Ellen DeGeneres put Twitter in the spotlight during the Oscars, when she brought some of the biggest stars in Hollywood together for a selfie. It was the most retweeted post of 2014 with 3.3 million retweets, and is still one of the most retweeted posts in the social network’s history.
Twitter Camera, Q&A, and Mirror are among a handful of new efforts Twitter is making to boost user growth in 2016, including toying with the idea of increasing tweet limits from 140 characters to 10,000. The 10-year-old social site’s growth has slowed in recent years compared to rivals like Facebook and Instagram, which are swiftly expanding their user bases. Twitter has 320 million monthly active users, while four-year-old Instagram has 400 million, and Facebook has an incredible 1.55 billion.