Twitter is currently testing a new feature called Flock, which will apparently allow you to tweet to people who follow you in a closed group.
Social networks are, by their very nature, widely shared social experiences. But, there are also options available on different platforms that limit who can see what you post. On Facebook, for example, you simply set your audience to make content public — meaning anyone can see it — or limit viewing to a certain number of named people.
On Twitter, there aren’t many options when it comes to controlling who can see your tweets. Unless you block individual users or restrict your account to only be visible to people who follow you, this isan all or nothing approach — but that could change.
Just as Instagram has a feature for sharing content with a small group of people, we’ve known for a while that Twitter is working on something similar. Around the middle of last year, we learned of Trusted Friends — Twitter’s version of Instagram’s Close Friends — and now more details have started to emerge.
The first thing to note is that there seems to have been a name change. The feature, which is no longer called Trusted Friends, now appears to be called Twitter Flock. In a screenshot shared on Twitter by mobile developer Alessandro Paluzzi, we can see that work has noticeably progressed:
#Twitter keeps working on the implementation of Twitter Flock (Trusted Friends) 👀 pic.twitter.com/roizS5K99K
– Alessandro Paluzzi (@ alex193a) January 14, 2022
The confidentiality at the heart of the experience
As you can see from the screenshot taken from the iOS version of the Twitter app, your Flock is a group that can consist of up to 150 people. Anything you post or share with your Flock can only be seen by those people, and only members of the Flock will be able to reply to tweets.
Privacy is an essential feature of Twitter Flock. Not only does this feature allow users to limit who can view and interact with content, but Twitter also clarifies that “people won’t be notified if you remove them from your Twitter Flock», which avoids clumsy explanations!
For now, Twitter does not reveal anything about this feature. The company neither confirms nor denies what exactly Flock is, and declared to The Verge that she “is always working on new ways to help people engage in healthy conversations, and we’re currently exploring ways to allow people to share more privately“. The company continues:We have no further news to share on this feature at this time, but we can confirm that the name “Twitter Flock” is just a placeholder ».
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