Direct messaging on Twitter has been a key feature since the social media platform launched, allowing people to share information they might not want to have displayed for the public to see. It’s a flawed service though, as direct messaging tweets are completely separate from the rest of the services tweets, with no way to share any public content, unless you awkwardly stick it into a post by copy and pasting the link in each time. Until now.
The Latest Twitter Updates
Twitter have been rolling out a number of new updates this month, after discussing changes to the social platform at the company’s Analytic’s Day event. In the past week there has already been changes to the advanced search engine, with the option to now search for any public tweet ever posted, and an update for the direct messaging service has been put in place so users can now directly share public posts when privately conversing with another follower.
How It Works
Direct Messaging works in the same way as before. You select a follower, click the message button, then type away, but now there are features in place to pull up a public tweet and insert it directly into the post. This is done in a variety of different ways depending on the hardware/system used. For services like TweetDeck and the desktop site, you can insert a public post by searching through the ‘more’ options when seeing a post you want to specifically share to someone. On mobile phones, it’s a case of pressing down on the specific tweet till the option becomes available.
The Benefits
The benefits of this new system is for selecting specific posts to share to the people who you want to see them. A general retweet of an interesting post is seen by everyone on the feed, but only if they’re on at the time you’ve shared it. With the ability to share public posts through direct messages, you can get a follower to see what you want them to see, when you want them to see it. It’s great for customer service for business, as they can highlight past posts, news and links to aid them with customer queries.
Tweeting with RS Digital
The new update brings the public and private side of Twitter together. At RS Digital, we can set up a Twitter account to help build your online presence, and through the direct messaging service, we can help answer queries without having to share the whole thing publicly.
JoeRayW
RS Digital
Senior Researcher
