Twitter Circle lets you handpick 150 people to tweet to

UPDATE 8/31/2022 1:30 PM ET: Twitter Circle feature has started rolling out to all users on Android, iOS, and the web. – here’s how it works.

Twitter’s newest feature is called Circle, and it’s aimed at limiting who can see your tweets.

Currently in testing with a select user group across Android, iOS, and the web; it lets you add up to 150 people to a ‘Circle’ to see the tweets you want them to.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s remarkably similar to how Circles worked on Google+ when that was still a thing. Instagram’s Close Friends feature is also similar, but it is focused on disappearing Stories.

When a Twitter designer teased it last year, it was called Trusted Friends. Now it’s Twitter Circle, with nobody on social media using original names anymore.

READ MORE: Twitter Notes is the platform’s jump into long-form content

When your account gets the feature, you’ll be able to set up a list for your Circle. If you tweet to a Circle, only the accounts on that Circle will see those tweets.

Before this, you had to lock your account to limit who could see your tweets. That’s no longer the case, which is nice. The only limit is that Twitter is only allowing people to make one Circle right now.

We still have some questions about how Twitter Circle works. For example, Twitter says you can’t remove yourself from a Circle, but you can still mute individual conversations. That opens the door to harassment, which is already bad enough on the bird app.

The saving grace here is that all of Twitter’s usual rules apply to tweets in a Circle. That means you can still report harassers or content that goes beyond normal conversation.

Giving us more control over who sees our tweets is a good thing. I hope Twitter listens and adds some way to remove your account from another person’s Circle, otherwise the control is one way only.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere. His hobbies include photography, animation, and hoarding Reddit gold.