Now you can Direct Message (almost) anyone on Twitter

Twitter today announces a number of key changes to the way its messaging system works. Until now it has only been possible to exchange a private Direct Message with another user if you both follow each other. This all changes as Twitter introduces the ability to DM anyone as long as they have the feature enabled on their account.

Just last week, Twitter announced that it will use a Dublin-based branch to handle all non-US account data but today's news is all about communication. If you're happy to receive DMs from anyone on Twitter, you can flip the switch on a setting that makes this possible.

Last year Twitter introduced a feature that made it possible to share tweets via Direct Message, but DMs could still only be sent between users who followed each other. If you're happy to receive DMs from all and sundry, pay a visit to the Security and Privacy settings page and enable the 'Receive Direct Messages from anyone' setting. Twitter points out that messaging rules have been changed so that should you receive a DM from someone who does not follow you, you will be able to reply anyway.

But how can you tell if you are able to send DMs to a particular user without just trying and hoping for the best? An update to the iOS and Android apps means that a messaging icon appears on the profile pages of users who have enabled the feature. If you don’t see the changes straight away, just hang on in there as they are rolling out around the global and may take a while to hit your account.

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