Twitter adds read receipts and other updates to Direct Messages

Twitter is rolling out upgrades to its messaging service on Android and iOS. The messaging service, “Direct Messages” is bundled with the microblogging experience in the Twitter App. The company announced the improvements via a tweet, highlighting read receipts, typing indicator and detailed preview for links.

This is a far-cry from a time when external links were banned in DMs. The new features are being rolled out in a staged rollout so it may be a while before everyone receives the update. We received the update on our Twitter client for Android which detailed the features.  The addition of the feature is somewhat polar where people would not want strangers or twitter followers to be notified that they have read the message. To solve this, Twitter has given an option for users to opt out of the read receipts features. This option mirrors the mechanism by Apple’s iMessage and Facebook’s WhatsApp but contrasts the lack of opt-out in Facebook Messenger as reported by VentureBeat. Even though there is no way to opt out of typing indicator which will tell the other person when you are typing the message. There is no word on the rollout of feature for Windows phone device. This comes right after the announcement by the company to share advertisement revenue generated by videos uploaded by users in the USA. Twitter has been battling stagnant growth with the push towards online video.