Back to square one: Twitter no longer allows all followers to send you a DM

Twitter has pulled out the ability to send a Direct Message to anyone from the service. The micro-blogging website had   quietly added the feature, allowing users to receive Direct Messages from any of their followers without the need for a mutual-follow, but the ability has now been taken off.

The Next Web first noted that that the checkbox, which appeared in settings and asked you whether you wanted any follower to be able to send you a Direct Message, had disappeared. Essentially, we’re back to the time where both users have to follow each other to be able to send each other DMs.

Maybe not

When asked, Twitter simply pointed Mathew Ingram on the micro-blogging website to a blog post in September. Taking a slightly easy way out, Twitter is hinting at the fact that it is constantly experimenting by adding and removing features on the website as well as its applications in order to “make it even easier to follow what you care about, connect with people and discover something new on Twitter.”

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

The tweaking of DMs draws attention to the fact that the micro-blogging website has its eyes trained on the feature. Not too long ago, rumours were doing the rounds that Twitter is planning to revamp the messaging feature all together. Essentially, we could be looking at a standalone Direct Messaging application, quite similar to how Messenger is now a sister application for Facebook on mobiles. It will be cool to see how Twitter, if at all, adds zing to the DM feature. Maybe we can see the partial-follow DM ability make a comeback then.