Twitter has been working hard to make Direct Messages or DMs a thing for quite a while, and finally yesterday, it rolled out an update: a direct message button in tweets. Whether this message button will actually motivate a user to share a tweet or not cannot be said right away, but it is there so we will see.
Twitter making DMs more attractive
Twitter has had “share in Direct Message” as an option under the share menu for a while in the Android app, but this new message button prominently appears on the far right of the tweet next to the “like” button, which was added late last year, replacing the favorite star. If you tap the message button, it will take you to the same screen the older systems did and will ask if you would like to talk in private.
Most importantly, this new message button removes one tap from sharing a tweet in a Direct Message. Also it just makes direct messaging more prominent among other popular options like re-tweet, reply and like. But we can’t tell for now if this will cause more people to use the direct message functionality; we will just have to wait and see.
Since last year, Twitter has been constantly launching new features to highlight its Direct Messaging. The social media platform introduced a new feature in August allowing users to send DMs longer than 140 characters. Also DMs got emoji and GIF support, along with the option of starting a private group message.
DMs growing popular among users
This new button has been inspired by users’ feedback after number of DMs grew over 60% in 2015, according to Twitter’s product manager – Somas Thyagaraja. Also in the second half of last year, the number of tweets shared privately grew even faster by 200%.
“With all this interest, we’ve also heard from many of you that it could be easier to share a Tweet using Direct Message. So now — in just a few taps — you can share unique Twitter content from your timeline right into your private conversation,” the micro-blogging firm said in a blog post.
Remember, this Message button is only being added to Twitter’s mobile app, and there has been no news about it being added to the web app or anywhere else for that matter. To use the new feature, a user just has to update their Android or iOS app.