Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Twitter appears to be working on a feature that lets you share tweets with a specific group of people (via Input). If this sounds familiar, it’s because Instagram’s Close Friends feature lets you do the exact same thing — but in Twitter’s case, you’ll be limiting your tweets to your “Flock.”
Twitter first gave us a glimpse of the feature last July, which it called “Trusted Friends” at the time. Since then, mobile developer Alessandro Paluzzi has been keeping track of Twitter’s progress, and it’s really starting to take shape.
#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
Paluzzi’s most recent findings give us some insight into how the feature might operate — Twitter seems to be working on a page that shows more information on Flock, which explains you can add up to 150 members. Only these users can view or reply to tweets sent out to your Flock. And in case you decide you don’t want someone in your Flock anymore, Twitter notes you can remove people from your list at any time, and they won’t get a notification.
If you’re in someone’s Flock and they send out a tweet, Paluzzi noticed a label that may appear beneath that tweet, reading: “You can see this Tweet because the author has added you to their Flock.” This should make it easy to distinguish between close friends versus everyone else you follow on Twitter. To send a tweet to your Flock, it looks like Twitter will display an audience option before you send it out, letting you choose between all of Twitter and your selected users.
Twitter launched invite-only Communities back in September, a similar feature that lets you connect with users with shared interests. Just like you can limit your tweets to your Flock, you can send out tweets to a specific Community rather than all your followers. It’s still unclear when Twitter’s “close friends”-like feature will reach all users, but, hopefully, it won’t flop like Fleets.
“Twitter is always working on new ways to help people engage in healthy conversations, and we’re currently exploring ways to let people share more privately,” Twitter spokesperson Tatiana Britt told The Verge. “We don’t have any further news to share about the feature at this time, but we can confirm ‘Twitter Flock’ is just a placeholder name.”