Twitter, a micro-blogging platform is known for allowing users to share their tweets with the world and join conversations as well as world trends. Its mantra literally states, “See what’s happening in the world right now.”
One tweet, may it contain a full-on 280 characters, a single sentence, a single word, a single letter or a mere emoji could reach miles and miles and reach the other side of the world! For 16 years, Twitter has been a home for microbloggers who loves to share their thoughts with the world. Communities have also been formed through specific hashtags. These hashtags allow users to navigate or browse discussions on a specific topic.
These hashtags are also called trends that allow users to see what’s happening or what’s the current talk of the town around their area, in their country, in a specific country, and even worldwide!
Twitter has two account types, the “public account” and the “private account”. The first type, public account, makes your account and tweets visible to every user on the platform. Features such as retweet and quote tweet can be done which means users will be able to share and repost your tweet within and outside the platform through link sharing. If you are more of the reserved type, a private account is for you. Your tweets will only be visible to your followers and you have the freedom to hand pick the users that will be able to view your locked account. Unlike on the previous account type, retweet, quote tweet and link sharing are not applicable for tweets under a private account.
Public account holders must be extra careful with their tweets since everyone can see their tweets. However, you might miss the fun of conversing with people around the world if you’ll set your account to private, how boring could that be? Good thing that Twitter just released their new feature called “Twitter Circle”.
This new Circle feature allows users to share tweets with their selected audience—completely personalized while keeping your account public! Users can now make their community and add up to 150 users that will see whatever they tweet on that smaller space. This way, they have the option to converse with the world on their main feed while still having the ability to tweet privately to their selected community.
Tweets on your Twitter Circle will only be visible to your chosen friends or users and these tweets are not shareable via a link and can’t even be retweeted and quote tweeted. This assures users that what’s on the circle stays in the circle.
What if you were added to a circle and you do not want to be in one for some reason? Right now, there’s not an option of leaving a circle once you’re added but on a tweet, the platform has stated that you can unfollow, mute or block that user and you will be removed from their Twitter Circle. If you wish to keep following the user and just want out of their circle, you can simply refollow, unmute or unblock that user right after.
To start your own circle, the option “Twitter Circle” can be found on your account’s navigation page, or simply compose a tweet and click the dropdown menu and choose “Twitter Circle.”
This feature can be compared to Facebook’s private groups and Instagram’s close friends features.
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