This seems very likely to be an emergency reaction to the activist investors that have just started making noises[1]. Over the last 5 years facebook is up 150% in value and twitter is down 22% and that's a pretty consistent trend. Dorsey isn't even full time at Twitter, their development track record has been trash and Dorsey's planning on going to Africa for 3 months. This looks very much like a defensive move, but given how lame this feature is I think this is going to be way too little too late. The time to release this feature was July 9th 2011 - the day after Snapchat launched. Not a decade later.

[1]https://www.marketwatch.com/story/twitters-jack-dorsey-faces...