Advertisement

Twitter Circle is launching for your hottest takes and most unpopular opinions

Early tests show people tweet more often and get more engagement with Twitter Circle, according to the company.

Twitter

Twitter’s feature for tweeting only to close friends is now available to all its users. After nearly four months of testing, Twitter Circle is rolling out for everyone to help people feel “more comfortable tweeting and expressing themselves.”

Twitter Circle is a bit like Instagram’s “close friends” feature.. Meant to be a sort of middle-ground between a public and private account, users can designate some tweets to be viewable only to a smaller “circle” of up to 150 followers. The feature could help address a long-running issue for the company: that many Twitter users simply don’t feel comfortable tweeting that much, either for fear of harassment or simply the pressures associated with public-facing accounts.

Interestingly, Twitter says that its early tests of the feature have shown that users with Circle tweet more overall, and get more likes and replies when tweeting to a smaller group. The company notes that it also reduces the need for users to have a secondary account or switching their accounts back and forth between public and private.

Twitter Circle is the latest way Twitter has tried to create spaces for users to interact with smaller audiences without making their accounts completely private. The company has also experimented with a Facebook Groups-like feature, called Communities, and subscriber-only content for creators with Super Follows. But Twitter Circle, which users can access directly from the tweet composer, is an even more accessible way of controlling the audience for each tweet. That may seem at odds with the “town square” vision of Twitter vaunted by its would-be acquirer, but increased engagement could also help the company’s bottom line.