Twitter continues its efforts to give more control to its users. The microblogging social network has just announced a new feature that will allow tweeters to decide which people can respond to their conversations.
They had been testing it for some time, specifically since May, but it is now that this functionality has been launched globally, as reported by Twitter in its official blog.
With this new feature, users can choose who responds, whether everyone, only the people being followed or only the people being mentioned. It seems that this way the conversation will be more difficult between users, but it will also encourage more control by users.
In order to decide that only a certain part of the users can answer the tweets, those who are not authorized will find the answer icon in gray. However, those blocked from replying will be able to retweet, retweet with comment, share and give to like.
According to Twitter, these settings help some people “feel safer” by being “more protected from spam and abuse”.
Similarly, Twitter has noted that during the trial period this setting was found to “prevent an average of three potentially abusive responses. No increase in unwanted direct messages was detected either.
Another data provided by Twitter in this release is that six out of ten social network users who have used this new functionality did not use the mute or block functions during this time.