Twitter has apparently began a roll out a feature to allow people to receive direct messages from anyone who follows them. This was first brought up by businessman Jim Connolly who noticed the new settings option in his account on Tuesday. The revelation is creating a confusion among Twitter users, many of whom think that they can now send direct messages to anyone. News flash: They can’t.
According to the option in the Settings page of your Twitter account, which is accessible only from the desktop site, the way it works is that when you have it available for your account, you must activate the feature by filling in the checkbox and saving your preference. From then on, your followers will be able to send you direct messages and you can talk to each other in private on Twitter. Only from your followers. Not everyone with a Twitter account.
While this would allow people to exchange messages without having to ask people to follow beforehand and avoid the awkwardness that may ensue, it certainly will open the floodgates to spam. Although you can easily block spammers and prevent them from following you and sending you direct messages, you really can’t control who follows you unless you set your account to private.
Twitter’s direct message is actually a one way operation. A person can send direct messages only to those who follow their account, not the other way around. The two way private communication happens only when two accounts happen to be following each other, thereby allowing direct messages to be exchanged. That was how it has always been until July 2011 when Twitter began to allow certain verified accounts to choose to receive direct messages from their followers.
Back in 2011, when the feature was discovered, it was thought that all verified accounts have been or will be given an option to accept messages from their followers if they choose to allow it. That wasn’t the case as The Next Web’s updated report shows. Tuesday’s news also falls in the same category. Twitter even sent The Next Web the same response it did in 2011 about this new behavior.
Twitter’s Managing Director for the UK, Bruce Daisley was not forthcoming about the feature when asked by Connolly.
@JimConnolly we never comment on speculative articles. Thanks.
— Bruce Daisley (@brucedaisley) October 15, 2013
Since there had been no announcement about the change from Twitter, it’s safe to say that at least at this stage, the nature of direct messages has yet to change and that these new behavior is yet another limited experiment that Twitter is running to discover how people will respond to changes to the service.
So, in short, ever since people can send direct messages on Twitter, it’s always been one way, only to followers. The new feature discovered on Tuesday allows certain people to choose to receive direct messages from followers, an option that has been available to certain verified accounts since 2011. It’s not available for everyone yet.
