Twitter Friends-Only Tweets & New Features - Updates

Twitter Explores New Features for Enhanced User Control

Twitter routinely shares potential feature and design concepts during their early development phases. Recently, the platform showcased ideas for an “unmention” function, enabling users to remove tags from tweets they are included in. Now, the company is presenting further design explorations focused on giving users greater control over tweet visibility and reply management.

New Concepts Under Consideration

These new concepts encompass the ability to share tweets exclusively with a select group of trusted friends, proactive prompts encouraging users to reconsider potentially harmful language in replies, and a “personas” feature allowing context-specific tweeting.

The company emphasizes that these are preliminary concepts and is actively seeking user feedback to guide future development.

Expanding Reply Controls: Trusted Friends

This new idea builds upon last year’s feature allowing original posters to designate who can reply to their tweets. Currently, users can limit replies to those mentioned, their followers, or everyone. However, even with these restrictions, all users can still view, like, and retweet the post.

The proposed Trusted Friends feature would enable users to tweet to a self-defined group. This could facilitate more intimate conversations with real-life friends or smaller, closely-knit networks.

This functionality could potentially increase Twitter usage and attract new users. However, it could also alter the platform’s core identity as a public forum, potentially leading users to share less content publicly and impacting overall engagement.

Twitter believes this private format could reduce the need for workarounds like managing multiple accounts or switching between public and protected tweets.

Promoting Considerate Communication: Reply Language Prompts

Another feature being explored is Reply Language Prompts. This would allow users to specify phrases they don’t want to encounter in replies. When someone attempts to post a reply containing these terms, they would be highlighted, accompanied by an explanation of the original poster’s preference.

For example, a user could configure a prompt to appear when profanity is detected in a reply.

This feature is designed as a gentle suggestion for more considerate communication, rather than a strict restriction.

Similar “nudges” have proven effective in the past; a prompt encouraging users to read articles before retweeting increased article opens by 40%.

Tweeting with Multiple Identities: Facets

The third, and most complex, feature is called Facets.

This concept allows users to tweet from different personas within a single account. This would be beneficial for individuals who frequently share content related to diverse aspects of their lives, such as work, hobbies, or personal interests.

Unlike Trusted Friends, which restricts visibility, Facets would allow followers to choose which personas they want to follow. For instance, a user could follow tech-related tweets while ignoring sports commentary.

This addresses the common concern of alienating followers with “off-topic” posts. However, it shifts the responsibility of content filtering to the user, potentially being less effective than an algorithmic timeline that learns user preferences.

Looking Ahead

Twitter clarifies that these features are currently design mockups and are not yet under development. The company will evaluate user feedback to determine whether to proceed with any of these concepts.