Twitter experimenting with ‘mute’ function on mobile

2 May 2014

Microblogging site Twitter is reportedly looking to experiment with the idea its users can ‘mute’ people who are littering their feed with tweets.

For those Twitter users who are fed up with seeing people they follow continuously post messages about one topic every few minutes or giving a running commentary of a sporting event, this may prove to be a godsend, yet begs the question why a user would follow them in the first place?

According to the Verge, a number of Twitter users on the mobile platform have noticed they have gained the ability to mute particular accounts with the option of un-muting if they so please, quite similar to Facebook’s ability to un-follow someone in a person’s feed without necessarily breaking the connection with them.

However, the concept of muting in Twitter is not particularly new. Third-party developers of Twitter software, such as Tweetdeck (which has since been acquired by Twitter itself), have had the option of muting someone since 2011, but this marks the first official integration into the app.

The company hasn’t released an official statement on the change, but previously stated that users should expect to see changes occurring to the app almost on a daily basis. “Some changes are visible –– they may help you protect your Twitter account or make it easier to share photos; others are under-the-hood changes that help us suggest relevant content in real-time and make Twitter more engaging.”

Mobile engagement on Twitter is steadily becoming its core point of access for users, with its recent report claiming that mobile monthly active users reached 198m in Q1 of this year, bringing the total mobile userbase to 78pc.

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Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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