Twitter now allows anyone to send you a direct message

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In an effort to keep users engaged on the popular micro-blogging platform, Twitter just rolled out an update that allows anyone to send direct messages to one another, regardless of they’re following each other or not.

I first discovered this from Vindu Goel, a technology reporter for the New York Times:

Twitter now lets you allow anyone to send you a direct message. Also, you can now respond to DMs sent by people who don't follow you.

— Vindu Goel (@vindugoel) April 20, 2015

To see if this was the real deal, I unfollowed Abdul Al-Basith, a blogger for TechnoMaple to see if it actually worked. To my surprise, it did.

This is something users have requested for years now. Although it’s a sought out feature, there’s still a lot of people who prefer to be contacted by people they only follow. This new update could open the doors to thirsty spammers, which is something you can certainly bet on.

But the way I see it, it’s a great way to bring public arguments into more of a private setting. Also, I could see this as a great way for brands to provide customer support on the fly.

Either way you look at it, it’s a great way for Twitter as a company to onboard new users. Let’s see what happens.

Kevin Raposo

Kevin is KnowTechie's founder and executive editor. With over 15 years of blogging experience in the tech industry, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com or find him on Mastodon or Post.