Twitter Testing Methods to Find Content Shared in Direct Messages

Twitter is currently working on a brand-new option which would allow users to easily locate any kind of content which has been shared with others within direct message conversations you've had in the past. This would include images, links, and tweets, and the new option would provide you with the capability of quickly finding any of these which you've previously shared in conversations.In order to locate such content, you would need to tap on the information icon which is situated at the upper right corner of a specific Twitter message, so that the new feature can be accessed. This will allow you to report or block any conversation, as well as to mute any notifications in the future for that individual exchange. Now there will also be an option for Shared Content, and if you tap on this, it will direct you to a listing of all those types of content which have been shared with others, within a specific group, or in a private conversation.

It is intended to provide a useful way of tracking discussions, or of locating a particular piece of content in which you were discussing something several days ago with a friend. This should not be a surprise to Twitter users, in light of the fact that all social media platforms have recently placed so much emphasis on messaging and on personal exchanges.This will offer another way to keep track of and manage any private discussions you have had recently. Twitter in particular has issued a steady stream of updates in the area of direct messaging, because it is their intention to provide more and better tools for direct conversation on the platform. There have been a number of other direct messaging initiatives which Twitter has provided to users in recent months, as can be seen from the information below.

Sharing tweets with close friends

This option was made available in June 2019 and it involves prompting users with sharing links through direct messaging to those individuals whom they communicate with most often. This feature made it faster and easier for users to share tweets with the people whom they communicated with most often. The prompt would show you the profile image of one of your user friends, so you have the option to share via Direct Message. If you happen to be a person who shares a good number of tweets with friends via direct messaging, this could be a very useful feature.

From Twitter's perspective, it also aligned with their gradual shift toward greater emphasis on private sharing. It makes sense for both Twitter and for users to encourage more direct messaging discussion, and there's no doubt that the new feature has been at least moderately well received by users.At the same time that the message-sharing feature was rolled out, Twitter also made available a new mini-profile card alert which was associated with New Follows, and that made it easier to learn more about a specific user, while also allowing you to follow them back from the prompt provided. It used to be that all you would get is a thumbnail which you could hover over, or which you would click on to take some kind of action. Now, new followers appear with a built-in full description of their profile, as well as a Follow button. The whole intent behind this is to reduce the number of clicks that are necessary in order to establish new connections to other users.

Direct messaging search option

In August 2019, Twitter announced a direct messaging search option which it was working on. This option was intended to be most useful for those individuals who get a ton of direct messages on Twitter, since it would allow them to easily search through all those messages. You can search either by Twitter handle or by profile name, but at the present time it's not possible to use message content as one of your search criteria.While that may be the most useful way to use the feature, it's not available in the current option, although it may be in testing mode and planned for a future release. This would add a tremendous amount of value to the option, so it is thought that searching by message content will likely be available in the future.

New conversation options

Also in the area of messaging and conversations, Twitter has recently added a number of conversational options, which were intended to provide more appeal so that platform usage might increase in the aftermath. Some of the new features added in the conversational area included color-coded responses, and status updates as well as sorted replies which would be segregated by using algorithms.The color-coded replies would be closely associated with your connections, making them easier to find within large threads. For instance, people you already are associated with might be colored blue, whereas others might be red or orange. The algorithm-sorting is meant to assist users so they can stay up to date with aspects of discussion they consider most relevant to them personally, as well as to bolster engagement between users. Since this would involve a fairly significant change to the Twitter experience, it was the hope of the platform that greater usage would result, and that current users would find them to be very useful on a daily basis.

Reasons for emphasis on direct messaging

It is known that over the past year, Twitter has seen a significant increase in direct messaging usage, which is an indication of its surging popularity. In an effort to align its development efforts with the wishes of users, Twitter has therefore invested more time and resources into providing more messaging options and more tools. Presumably, all these tools and options would facilitate even greater usage of direct messaging, which appears to be one of the hottest trends among all social media platforms these days.The official launch date for these latest direct messaging options has not yet been announced, but it is likely to be in the very near future, given the platform's commitment to direct messaging improvements. For anyone who is a fan of direct messaging, you should definitely take comfort from the fact that Twitter is committed to providing greater functionality and greater efficiency in that area on its platform.