Twitter begins testing audience control feature ‘Who can Reply’

Twitter is testing a new feature ‘Who can Reply’. The functionality of this feature is akin to Facebook’s viewing post. ‘Who can Reply’ gives the users control over the audience that replies to their Tweets.

The user can choose from three options – Everyone, People You Follow and Only People You Mention. Depending on which option the user choose, they selected group will be able to reply to the Tweets. The unselected group can View, Like and Retweet but they won’t be able to Reply to the Tweet. The thread itself will acknowledge that replies are limited with a disclaimer. 

The objective of the new feature is to facilitate additional Tweet discussion options - like an interview type conversation via Tweets, which people can follow without the distraction of a thousand other voices chiming in. With the capacity to restrict who can join a discussion, it will make it much easier to see the key back-and-forth in a single thread.