Twitter has introduced a new interface for your direct messages on the web, which allows you to send and receive DMs without having to leave your timeline. While you currently need to open a separate section of the Twitter website to view your DMs, you will now be able to access them from a popup at the bottom right of your timeline. According to the Twitter video, it looks like an interface similar to what Facebook and LinkedIn are currently offering for DM on their platforms.
It seems like a decent upgrade to the platform’s messaging interface, but Twitter ended up announcing the feature at the worst possible time, during the worst attack the platform has ever hit. The official Twitter account announced the launch of the feature at 4:51 p.m. ET, about half an hour after Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Twitter account was hacked into promoting a bitcoin scam.
At the end of the day, high-profile accounts from people like Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Apple had tweeted similar messages, prompting Twitter to take the unprecedented step of preventing all verified accounts from completely tweeting. The social network finally confirmed that its internal tools had been compromised, contributing to the hack. Suffice it to say that the event blew the Twitter product announcement.
ok there is also a big bitcoin scam going on
– Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) July 15, 2020
The new Twitter DM interface, which appears to have been in development since at least April this year, follows the introduction of emoji reactions in January, along with a new DM search feature that arrived in its iOS app last year.
Twitter says the new feature is being rolled out on the web.
