Twitter’s new DM feature- what’s exciting and what’s not?
In its attempt to make DMs simpler with the new overlay feature, what does Twitter miss out on?
In what came as a long due to its users, Twitter on July 16 rolled out a new feature on the web that overlays the chat window right on a users’ timeline.
Much similar to Facebook and LinkedIn, this Twitter desktop redesign introduced a popup window at the right bottom corner, which allows you to send and receive direct messages (DMs) without leaving your timeline. Until now, every time the counter on the message icon went up or you wanted to text someone, you had to take the pain to navigate to an altogether new window, and by the time you got back to your feed, you would have lost the tweet you were reading.
Even as the Twitter community has for long had an eye on the tweet edit button, possibilities of which seem rare, this new desktop DM feature is being celebrated by many.
Though the chat window has a link to ‘Message requests’, selecting it pulls you out of your timeline and redirects you to the main message window, hence nullifying the very objective of the popup.
However, the popup message window doesn’t allow one to block or report the message sender or leave a conversation. For carrying out any of these activities, you will have to navigate to the message window by clicking on the ‘Messages’ icon to the left of your feed.
Even as Twitter got all excited about its new rollout, the massive Bitcoin scam on Twitter that took place the same day put a damper on its announcement of the new DM feature. The micro-blogging platform launched the roll at 4:51 p.m. ET, only half an hour later after cyber-attackers hacked into Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s twitter account to promote an apparent Bitcoin scam. Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Joe Biden were other top US figures targeted by these hackers.
In order to investigate, Twitter disabled tweeting and password reset ability for all verified accounts (the ones with a checkmark). Despite celebrating the feature, most of the Twitteratis replied to the announcement with their comments and demand for action on the Bitcoin scam.
With a surge in the number of Twitter users amidst the pandemic, the company is continuously bringing in new features to enhance user experience.
In its recent rollout of “Fleet” in the last month, a Stories-like Feature, Twitter gathered a number of claps from its users. Fleets allow sharing of content that is viewable only for 24 hours. The “fleeting thought” that a user shares can be in the form of GIFs, pictures, texts, or your own post.
June also saw the rollout of voice tweets for iOS users allowing them to send tweets in the form of audio clips, lasting as long as 140 seconds. Earlier, Twitter had improved the ‘Lists’ section with its new feature addition, ‘Show more recommendations’.
