Twitter continues to work on a new feature that lets users post certain tweets to a limited number of close friends in a parallel timeline on the social media platform.
Previously floated in July 2021 as "Trusted Friends," the feature is now called "Flock," and will allow users to limit their audience for specific content to no more than 150 people, according to screens uncovered by mobile developer Alessandro Paluzzi.
When a tweet is sent to your Flock, only people in the Flock can view and reply to it, and a label may appear beneath that tweet that reads: "You can see this Tweet because the author has added you to their Flock." However, if you decide you don't want someone in your Flock anymore, you can boot them out of it and they won't get a notification.
#Twitter continues to work on Twitter Flock by adding an explanation of how it works 👀 ℹ️ You can choose up to 150 people to include in your Twitter Flock 👥
ℹ️ People won't be notified if you remove them from the list 🔕 pic.twitter.com/xtGcDiHgxS — Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) January 21, 2022
Before someone sends a tweet, Twitter will show an option to select its intended audience, allowing users to post it to all of Twitter or only to those in their Flock. In that sense it has similarities with Communities, a feature Twitter launched last year that lets people share discussions on a specific topic.
Flock is still in beta, so it's not clear when the feature will go live for all users, but Twitter has been working on it since at least July of last year. Flock shouldn't be confused with "Fleets," the ephemeral tweet option that was designed to compete with Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, Snapchat, and more. Fleets never caught on with Twitter users and the company canned the feature in August, less than a year after the feature launched.
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They could even add an "are you sure?" confirmation button to regular global tweets, to add a little bit more friction for potential mistakes.