Today, Twitter announced that they will be introducing a new feature for its iPhone and Android apps, as well as Twitter.com, that will allow users to mute specific people and prevent their tweets from showing up in the timeline.
Mute gives you even more control over the content you see on Twitter by letting you remove a user’s content from key parts of your Twitter experience.
If you have ever used the Twitter app to set up notifications for specific users, then you’ll know exactly how to use the mute button because it’s done in a very similar way.
Their are two ways you can go about muting users. You can mute a user from a Tweet by clicking or tapping on ‘more’ and then ‘mute @username’. You can also mute someone from their profile page by viewing their profile and then clicking or tapping on ‘mute @username.’
When you mute a user it means their Tweets and Retweets will no longer be visible in your home timeline, which of course also means you will no longer receive push or SMS notifications from that user if you have previously set up that feature. When a user is muted they will still be able to fave, reply to, and retweet your Tweets; you just won’t see that they have done so.
You can do this completely in secret as well, as the muted user will not know that you’ve muted them. You will also have the option to unmute them at any time. The feature is expected to be rolled out in the coming weeks.
Users of certain third party Twitter apps (like Tweetbot) may already be familiar with having the ability to mute others. It’s nice to see that Twitter has finally included this as a feature in their official apps and website.