Twitter Now Lets You Share & Discuss Tweets Privately

Twitter enhanced its back-channel discussion options today, enabling users to share and discuss tweets via direct message.

Now people will be able to send copies of tweets and comment on them out of the public eye. It’s not an earth-shattering change but it tightens a system that Twitter executives admitted was lacking.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo signaled last week that improvements to private messaging are coming; this is one of the first changes. Earlier this week, Twitter plugged a bug that prevented people from sharing URLs within DMs.

Today’s update is available today on Twitter.com and, after updating from the app stores, on the Android and iOS apps. It’s also live on TweetDeck for web, Chrome and Windows (with Mac coming soon).

On the mobile apps, users can access the feature by long-pressing a tweet in the timeline and choosing “Share via Direct Message.” And on Twitter.com and TweetDeck, uses can tap the “••• More” icon and select “Share via Direct Message.”

People who receive a shared tweet via DM will get the normal DM push notification, and see the tweet directly in the conversation:

Read more about the change on the Twitter blog.