Twitter has been the centre of a flurry of activities over the past few weeks with the imminent arrival of its new owner, Elon Musk, who has promised a sweeping amount of changes that have formed a great subject of debate. However, this has not stopped the platform from moving forward with its plans for the year.
In a new feature that closely mirrors the “Close Friends” functionality on Instagram, Twitter users can now tweet to a small group of accounts (up to 150 to be exact) with the rest of their followers being left in the dark. The feature is officially referred to as a Twitter Circle.
However, do not be alarmed if you do not see the Twitter Circle on your handle at the moment, as Twitter says it is still in its infancy stage, and only a small percentage of its users have access to it at the moment.
Despite not having the Twitter Circle on your handle, users who have access to it can still add you to their circle, and you will be able to view the tweets sent.
When building your circle, Twitter will recommend accounts to include based on who you interact with the most. It is interesting that you can also add accounts that do not follow you, however, it is unlikely that they will ever see your post since they are not following your account.
Users who have been added to one circle will be able to see all the replies to the sent tweet, as well as being able to interact with the said replies.
“Some Tweets are for everyone & others are just for people you’ve picked. We’re now testing Twitter Circle, which lets you add up to 150 people who can see your Tweets when you want to share with a smaller crowd. Some of you can create your own Twitter Circle beginning today!” Twitter says on its Safety account on the platform.
At the moment, users can only create one Twitter Circle, which sounds limiting from the get-go. However, this might change later down the line when the feature is rolled out to all accounts.
Unlike Google+ Circles, a notification will not be sent out to a user when you remove them from your circle. This potentially saves a lot of people from sheepishly explaining to their friends why they have been kicked out of their Twitter Circle.
Also, the person who creates the Circle is the only one who can see the list of people present in it. Once in a Circle, you can not remove yourself from it. But you can always unfollow the creator of the Circle and you will not come across his/her tweets.
To get started with Twitter Circle, click the oval above the text box when you’re writing a tweet, then change the audience from “Everyone” to “Twitter Circle,”
Despite the tweet only being shared with a small group of people, Twitter emphasizes that they will still crackdown on content that goes against their guidelines.
Twitter Circle has been rolled out to all platforms supporting Twitter, including iOS, Android, and the web.
