Twitter is working on a new feature with the working title “Twitter Flock”. This should make it possible to send tweets not to the entire Twitter community, but only to a selected group of users.
Twitter spokeswoman Tatiana Britt confirmed to the portal The Verge that Twitter is working on such a function. Twitter had already announced plans to do so in July 2021. Services like Instagram or WhatsApp already offer similar functions; In this way, Instagram stories or WhatsApp statuses can be shared with a smaller group of people.
Up to 150 people in the “Twitter Flock”
The working title “Twitter Flock” describes the function aptly: Users can put together their own “flock” (“flock”) with which they can share more private tweets. Up to 150 people should be allowed, and people can be removed or added to the herd at any time, according to the portal The Verge, which refers to the developer Alessandro Paluzzi relates. This examines the backend of apps like Clubhouse, Twitter or Instagram and tweets about it.
According to Paluzzi, only people within the Twitter flock can see and reply to the internal tweets. These tweets are apparently recognizable by a small symbol and the indication that you are seeing this tweet because you belong to the author’s flock. According to Paluzzi’s research, people are not notified when they are removed from the “herd.”
The screenshots by Paluzzi also show how the recipients of a tweet will probably be set in the future: Before sending, you can choose in a small menu whether the message should go to everyone or to your own flock. When the new feature will be released is still unclear.
(gref)