Did you ever try to share a funny tweet via Twitter DM with a few of your friends only to have it become a group chat? You are not the only one. Twitter today announced that it would make a few improvements to its direct messaging system in the coming weeks. This includes the ability to DM multiple people at once and to use individual conversations to send a tweet. Jane Manchun Wong, a researcher, noticed that Twitter had been working on this feature last month.
You can now DM multiple people a tweet and avoid awkward group chats. You can now share the same tweet in up to 20 different DM convos. This feature is now available on iOS and web. Soon, it will be available on Android. (2/5) pic.twitter.com/oHYseF3EJE Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) August 19, 2021
This update may invite spammers to send more messages. You can't send more than 20 messages at once, but it is still quite a large number of people. Users who receive these messages may not be aware that they are part of group spam. Individual DMs will appear as private messages.
Twitter claims that Android users will need to wait a little longer than iOS or web twitterers to access this feature. It is unclear how long it will take as in the past, iOS DM updates have taken years to reach Android. As a consolation prize on both Android or iOS, if you scroll down in a DM conversation you'll be able return to the most recent message by pressing the down arrow button to quickscroll.
Twitter's two other DM improvements have only been released on iOS. Instead of timestamping individual messages with date and time, messages can now be grouped by day. Twitter claims that individual DMs will still be timestamps, but this will result in less clutter.
Finally, iOS users can access the add reaction menu by double-tapping or long-pressing on a friend's message in DMs. You can also delete a friend message from your account, report it or copy it by long-pressing on a message.
Twitter announced today that it is testing a feature that allows users to access Revue newsletters via their profile. Twitter acquired the newsletter platform earlier in the year. It made more visible UI changes last week that experts believed made the platform more difficult to use. Twitter implemented contrast changes to its buttons within two days and discovered issues with its font Chirp for Windows.
