Twitter to roll out labs for experimental features

Twitter is launching a Google Labs-like area where engineers can roll out add-ons and other experimental functions for the social network.

Britt Selvitelle, a Twitter engineer, made the announcement earlier today at the Future of Web Apps conference in London, but didn’t release further details. The move comes the same month that Facebook unveiled its own testing area called ‘Prototypes’.

As social networks have made it dirt cheap to launch features affecting millions of users instantaneously, it’s become a necessity to have special areas to test features with a small number of interested users. It makes it easier to iron out bugs and to figure out what kinds of features users will have an appetite for.