Twitter Introduces “Trusted Friends” Feature
The social media major, Twitter, is considering a new feature that will let users filter out profanity from conversations. The company confirmed two concepts (Trusted Friends & Facets) for brand new options that may permit customers to target tweets towards particular users without swapping accounts or changing privacy settings.
These features would help users keep their private and professional lives separate, including allowing people to limit who sees specific tweets.
The first would allow folks to designate “Trusted Friends,” so some tweets would only be seen to that group. This concept would allow users to send tweets to a select group of friends or followers only. This is relatively similar to the ‘Closed Friends’ list for stories on Instagram. Users can create a list of trusted contacts on the platform and send out specific tweets for only this group.
Twitter designer Andrew Courter said:
“We hear you all, toggling your Tweets from public to protected, juggling alt accounts. It could be simpler to talk to who you want when you want. With Trusted Friends, you could Tweet to a group of your choosing. Perhaps you could also see trusted friends’ Tweets first.”
Another concept for a new feature is called “Facets.” which would let people take on different characters using the same account. Others would be able to follow the entire account or just the “facet” they are interested in. With Facets, you will be able to choose to follow tweets from Twitter users only when they are related to a particular topic that you’re following. In this way, you won’t have to follow every tweet disseminated by someone you’re following. Think about how much time you could save by restricting the tweets you receive to only those of interest to you.
In another tweet, Twitter designer Andrew Courter wrote:
“Here’s another approach, embracing an obvious truth: we’re different people in different contexts (friends, family, work, public). Facets, an early idea, lets you Tweet from distinct personas within one account. Others can follow the whole account or just Facets they’re interested in.”
Separately, the Twitter platform is also testing a new design for the deceptive labels introduced last year for select users to bring more context to help them better understand why a Tweet may be misleading.