Twitter wants to make it easier for people to DM you

What you need to know

Twitter is making it easier for people to send a direct message.
People will be able to send a DM right from their timeline.
The change is being tested on iOS.

The potential for abuse is real.

Twitter is making it easier and quicker for people to send you a direct message by putting a button right into their timeline.

The new button was announced by the Twitter Support account and will see people able to send a DM right from their timeline for the first time. The move will mean that people no longer have to tap a person’s profile before sending the DM, but the reduced friction could be just enough to cause an influx of direct messages for a ton of people.

For when you want to reply directly to a Tweet’s author, we’re making it easier to DM them from your timeline to start a conversation.

Now testing a DM icon on Tweets with some of you on iOS.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) February 3, 2022

It isn’t really clear why Twitter wants to make it easier for people to send direct messages and many would argue that there are more important things that need to be done to the social network. But for those who already receive either SPAM direct messages or worse, this could be very bad news indeed.

Getting out ahead of this now. Don’t DM me. It’s pretty unlikely I’ll read it. My DMs are not a place I want to be thank you very much. https://t.co/Plq7Fkv1l7

— Oliver Haslam (@OliverJHaslam) February 5, 2022

Twitter says that it’s rolling the new DM button out to people on iOS although not everyone will see it immediately. It’s also possible that the feature will not be made available to the wider Twitter community at all if the company decides that not enough people use it. This button will also only be offered in the official Twitter app — an app that is far from the best iPhone app for reading and sending tweets these days.

Twitter continues to tweak features and work on new ones without giving people the one thing they seem to crave — an edit button. That seems pretty far down the pecking order for Twitter’s list of priorities right now. If it’s on there at all.