Great news for all those Twitter users who follow people who “overtweet” — you can now mute that person without their knowledge and avoid the awkward, “Did you unfollow me?” discussion!
Twitter’s new feature started to roll out Monday and should soon be available to all mobile and desktop users.
The mute feature is described by Twitter as giving “you even more control over the content you see on Twitter by letting you remove a user’s content from key parts of your Twitter experience.”
Twitter made the announcement on their blog with the following statement:
In the same way you can turn on device notifications so you never miss a Tweet from your favorite users, you can now mute users you’d like to hear from less. Muting a user on Twitter means their Tweets and Retweets will no longer be visible in your home timeline, and you will no longer receive push or SMS notifications from that user. The muted user will still be able to fave, reply to, and retweet your Tweets; you just won’t see any of that activity in your timeline. The muted user will not know that you’ve muted them, and of course you can unmute at any time.
To mute a user from a Tweet on your iOS or Android device or on Twitter for web tap more and then mute @username. To mute someone from their profile page, tap the gear icon on the page and choose mute @username.
Should This Change Your Twitter Strategy?
You’ll certainly want to be more aware of your tweeting frequency and make sure you’re not flooding your followers. Chances are, once you’re muted, Twitter won’t give people a reason to unmute you.
On that note, here’s a suggestion to Twitter: allow timed temporary mutes. People often tweet a lot during Twitter chats — one of the great benefits of the Twitter platform — and this is likely to leave a lot of people muted permanently. That could discourage people from actively taking part in Twitter chats.
In general, though, I don’t think this change will make a major difference strategically. Twitter has always been fast-paced and the very nature of a 140-character limit encourages people to share multiple updates in small bursts.
Keep doing what you’re doing (unless you’re being spammy, of course).
(Image Source: Shawn Campbell / Flickr)