Twitter has rolled out a new feature that allows users to share public tweets to other users using direct messages, which is the social network's version of private chat messages.
The new feature is the first of several changes that Twitter promised that looked to make the social network more user-friendly.
The activation of the feature aims to make it simpler for users to move forward with conversations started in public to a more private channel. Additionally, the feature will also decrease the need for Twitter users to leave the social network, as before, users that wanted to share certain tweets in a private manner to their friends and contacts would first have to obtain the link to the tweet and then send it through an e-mail or paste the link in a direct message.
During a meeting between Twitter executives and analysts that was held last week, the company's executives said that the social network's direct messages will be one of the features that will be receiving more attention in the near future.
"I strongly believe private messaging virality is important to our long-term growth," said Dick Costolo, the CEO of Twitter.
During the meeting, Twitter also showed several features that are coming to the social network, including the ability of users to upload and share videos, more targeted notifications, better usage of locations, and a feature that highlights relevant tweets posted that the user missed while offline.
Users can now access the new feature on Twitter's mobile app by pressing on the tweet in their timeline and then clicking on the "Share via Direct Message" option.
For users that are accessing Twitter using their desktop computer and TweetDeck, they can activate the feature by clicking on the three dots on the bottom of every tweet, and then selecting the same option.
Twitter also recently announced a massive upgrade to the social network's search engine that will allow its users to search for any tweet that has ever been posted on Twitter.
The search function has always been available to users, but was only limited to tweets that were no more than seven days old. Once a tweet becomes older than seven days old, it is moved from Twitter's real-time index and into the company's machine network.
It was previously too expensive to include all the tweets ever posted in Twitter's history. However, new developments by Twitter engineers have upgraded the search function to search tweets dating as far back as Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's first tweet on March 21, 2006.
