Twitter has shared a few new features it’s considering for future versions of the app, including a ‘Trusted Friends’ system that would allow users to only share tweets with a small group of other users they’ve specifically chosen. This (and two other features) are currently just concepts from Twitter and not actively in development, but even so, they provide insight into where Twitter envisions the social platform heading as the months and years go on.
Twitter has matured a lot since its inception in 2006. Today, the app can be used for following breaking news, hosting live audio chats with Twitter Spaces, and even tipping someone’s favorite creators through the Tip Jar feature. The core Twitter experience can still be as simple as sharing a cat photo or meme, but the service regularly looks for ways to expand and grow on the formula in new ways.
In a recent thread on Twitter, one of the company’s designers shared a series of concepts the team has cooked up for the app – one of which is called ‘Trusted Friends.’ Before sending a tweet, users would indicate if they want to share it with everyone or with only their trusted friends — ideal if someone doesn’t want all of their followers to see a specific tweet. Some people have created alternate, private accounts to share tweets with a smaller group of users as is, but Twitter thinks something like Trusted Friends would be a far more seamless solution. It’s something that’s proven to work well on other social media apps (such as Instagram’s Close Friends), so its addition to Twitter would make a lot of sense.
Other New Sharing Features Twitter Is Considering
In addition to Trusted Friends, Twitter also teased something called ‘Facets.’ It’s another way to control how tweets are shared with people, though it’s a bit more customizable. Each user would create multiple Facets for their profile, with each one catering to a different audience. In addition to someone’s regular Twitter profile, they could create Facets for their work colleagues, political commentary, fitness updates, etc. Along with users being able to choose which Facet to tweet from, other people who follow their account coils choose to follow their entire profile or just a specific Facet from it. It’s more complicated than Trusted Friends and could get pretty confusing for some users, but the idea of having multiple mini-profiles under one overarching account is intriguing.
Last but not least, Twitter also shared a ‘Reply Preferences’ concept that would allow people to block specific phrases from replies to their tweets. Users would be able to enter words/phrases they don’t want to see in their replies, choose what to do with replies containing these things (such as automatically moving them to the bottom), and people typing a reply with these targeted words would see a warning letting them know the author doesn’t want to see content like that. Twitter has noted Reply Preferences would need some kind of list sharing feature to make this work (manually typing in hundreds - thousands of words is far from ideal), but it’s another feature that could have enormous potential in making Twitter feel more welcoming and personalized.
All three of these things sound like welcome additions to Twitter, and that’s what makes the fact that they’re just concepts a bit disappointing. It’s possible Trusted Friends, Facets, and Reply Preferences will come to Twitter at some point down the road, but given that they’re just concepts right now, it may be a while before that day happens – if it does at all.
Source: Twitter