Twitter is letting you choose who can reply to your tweets now: How it works

Tired of inane replies to your tweets? Twitter has a feature rolling in that will stop that and keep the conversation real, like you’d want it to be. Starting now, Twitter users will be able to control who can respond to their tweets. Currently available to only a small bunch of people globally, this new feature will show you three options you can pick from just before you post your tweet.

You can pick from - ‘everyone’, ‘only people you follow’ and ‘only people you mention’. This will let you restrict the conversation to a specific group of people and keep those unwanted replies away. However, everyone will still be able to see these conversations. This feature is quite similar to the custom options on Facebook posts.

While most of your tweets can be meant for your followers at large, you might want to keep some tweets, and the conversations around it,restricted to a certain bunch of people.

If you pick ‘everyone’, your tweet is open for replies from any one who sees your post. The ‘only people you follow’ option will only let your followers respond to your tweet. The ‘only people you mention’ option will keep the reponses between people you have tagged.

Like we’ve said, everyone can still see your tweet, but depending on your choice of option, not everyone can respond to it. Tweets with the last two options will be labelled and the reply icon will be greyed out so as it is clear for those who are not allowed to reply.

However, everyone can still retweet your tweet with or without comments and like it.

Twitter mentioned that it has rolled the feature out only for a small percentage of users on both Android and iOS for now. They have not announced a wider roll-out date yet.

“Being able to participate and understand what's happening is key for useful public conversation. So, we're exploring how we can improve these settings to give people more opportunities to weigh in while still giving people control over the conversations they start,” Twitter said in its blog.