Creating a separation between your public and personal lives has become more difficult than ever before due to the rise of social media, and there is no platform in which this difficulty of separation becomes more apparent than with Twitter. Having a large following on Twitter can often result in you being forced to censor yourself for fear of revealing too much to followers that you might not even know. Going private is one way to curb this issue, but many users felt that this left them between a rock and hard place because private Twitter accounts are rather limited in their scope.
Twitter is trying to fix this by taking a leaf out of Instagram’s book. Similarly to how on Instagram you can have a circle of close friends that you share more personal or private content with that would not be visible to your regular followers, Twitter is rolling out a new feature called “Flocks”. You can add up to 150 people to your Flock, and anything that you tweet to said Flock would not be visible by anyone else. This gives most users the best of both worlds. We already saw an experiment called Trusted Friends back in July, and it seems that Twitter is now rolling it out properly with a new name that appears to be more or less on brand from most points of view.
Twitter seems to be borrowing a lot of features from other social media platforms, such as the Facebook group inspired Communities that it also recently launched, but that is nothing new in the world of social media sites. This new feature is likely going to go over well, and it is an example of the more proactive approach that new CEO Parag Agrawal is taking with the company. Most users will be happy to get some extra privacy for their Twitter accounts.
Read next: Social Media Censorship is Getting Worse According to This Study
Twitter is trying to fix this by taking a leaf out of Instagram’s book. Similarly to how on Instagram you can have a circle of close friends that you share more personal or private content with that would not be visible to your regular followers, Twitter is rolling out a new feature called “Flocks”. You can add up to 150 people to your Flock, and anything that you tweet to said Flock would not be visible by anyone else. This gives most users the best of both worlds. We already saw an experiment called Trusted Friends back in July, and it seems that Twitter is now rolling it out properly with a new name that appears to be more or less on brand from most points of view.
Twitter seems to be borrowing a lot of features from other social media platforms, such as the Facebook group inspired Communities that it also recently launched, but that is nothing new in the world of social media sites. This new feature is likely going to go over well, and it is an example of the more proactive approach that new CEO Parag Agrawal is taking with the company. Most users will be happy to get some extra privacy for their Twitter accounts.
Read next: Social Media Censorship is Getting Worse According to This Study