As if reporting an IPO wasn’t enough news for one day, Twitter followed up their major announcement with a new feature Thursday to help its verified users better manage their Twitter conversations.
The update will allow verified users (those with the blue check marks) to filter their Twitter mentions within the “Connect” tab above their feed.
Verified users can now view their mentions in three separate categories: all, filtered, and verified. The idea is to help those users identify the conversations that may be most important to them by sifting out the spam.
Viewing connections in the “Verified” category will only show mentions by other verified users. Users who view mentions under the “Filtered” category will see posts “based on an algorithm we use to filter out spam,” wrote Product Manager Ed Gutman in the company’s blog post.
The new perk is another way to encourage Twitter’s most popular users to stay active on the platform. Last month, Facebook confirmed that it was also working on a VIP-only app to encourage celebs to engage more regularly with fans.
On Twitter any user can, in theory, get a message in front of any other user on the platform. Making it easier to sift through those messages may encourage the verified users to interact more readily with others through tweets — or it may mean that VIPs will be more likely to stick to themselves.
For now, the new feature will only be available on the site’s web version, although Twitter plans to bring it to mobile at some point in the future, wrote Gutman.
Do you believe this will increase engagement on Twitter? Tell us in the comments below.
Images: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images, Twitter
