Twitter wants to "improve the way you communicate," so they're giving people the option of sending and receiving direct messages from folk they don't follow/don't follow them.
Twitter announced the news today via their own blog. They spewed,
"Communicating with people you may or may not know in real life just got easier. Previously, if you wanted to send a Direct Message to the ice cream shop down the street about how much you love their salted caramel flavor, you’d have to ask them to follow you first. With today’s changes, the ice cream shop can opt to receive Direct Messages from anyone; so you can privately send your appreciation for the salted caramel without any barriers."
Er, strange analogy Twitter but OK.
For anyone worried about online bullying, they've thought of that and there's a way to end conversations fairly sharpish, as well as blocking someone acting the b**locks.
They break down exactly how to enable DMs over yonder on their blog. Basically you have to enable it.
When are they going to start charging people to see tweets, ala Facebook? "No, the user dictates what they see by their behaviour." Nah, they don't. Not really, ZUCKERBERG.
This will give future episodes of Catfish another layer anyway.
