Twitter introduced an experimental feature a month ago that allowed users to directly message someone without first being followed. Now it appears Twitter has quietly removed the feature without explanation about why. The Verge reports some users still have the feature, while it has been disabled for others.
The original use for the feature was to allow corporate accounts to receive messages from their followers without first having to follow them. This makes communication much simpler for businesses. However, opening up direct messages to anyone without mutual following could have resulted in an increase of spam.
Mathew Ingram, senior writer at GigaOm, reached out to Twitter but only received a link to the original blogpost about the experimental feature.
I asked Twitter why the "accept DMs from anyone" feature is gone, and all I got was a link to this post: https://t.co/HMfDnHiEn6
— Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) November 18, 2013
Twitter has been struggling to compete with messaging services like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Google Hangouts since users are not using direct messaging on its service. The company is also rumored to be coming out with its own messaging application.
Source: The Next Web