No Follow? No Problem!
What’s a Message? (formerly called a Direct Message)
A Message (previously called a Direct Message) is a private message sent via Twitter to one of your followers. (This is different than mentions and @replies.)
In turn, people you follow can send you a private message.
You cannot send a direct message to a user who is not following you.
From the Twitter Help Center (What is a Direct Message?)
When I was in private practice, our law firm had a corporate client who was very upset about some message board posts that, suffice it to say, falsely cast the company in a negative light. In an effort to avoid filing a costly defamation suit against the anonymous posters, we attempted to contact the commercial message board operator to request they immediately remove the damaging posts. Telephone calls and e-mails went unanswered and although we flagged the content as inappropriate, the operator’s moderators were slow to respond. (Unfortunately, it was not a Metaverse project!) Finally, we did receive a response, and ultimately some satisfaction, by sending tweets containing the message board operator’s handle. The operator was monitoring this type of tweet and quickly responded. The client was pleased.
The message board operator could not have been so happy. Given the open nature of the tweets – they were broadcast to all my Twitter followers and publicly remain on my Twitter page today – the operator was put in the awkward position of fielding complaints from a dissatisfied party in a public forum. And while as a law firm we were able to shield our client’s identity by referring to it generically, most consumers who want to tweet a grievance must do so openly, without privacy. Doing so in an open forum is often impossible for consumers with sensitive issues like those involving credit cards or health care.
Of course, it is possible to send a direct, private message to another on Twitter. (Think Anthony Weiner, or at least what he was trying to do.) In order for that to work, however, the recipient must be following the tweeter. Since businesses cannot possibly follow all their consumers, customers looking for assistance on Twitter must either tweet openly and hope the brand is watching for its name, or at a minimum, send a preliminary public request for the business to follow them. The process is awkward and time consuming.
In what could be a huge development for the social media customer service movement, Twitter has begun reconsidering the mandatory following requirement. According to media reports, a small number of accounts that Twitter has verified as genuine no longer need to follow a user before receiving a direct message. Unfortunately, the option is not yet universal, with Mashable reporting that Twitter is merely testing the function:
“We do not have plans for making this capability more widely available at this time,” the Twitter rep said. “We will continue to experiment with ways of helping people and companies get more value from Twitter. As with all of our experiments, we are listening carefully to feedback on this feature and will use that feedback to continue innovating and iterating.”
As digital service outsourcers, we regularly use Twitter and other social media channels to engage with consumers on behalf of the brands we service, and the no-follow direct message option seems like a win-win situation. Brands who do not want a flood of private messages can simply decline the option. Tweeters who want to blast out their views about a brand to the entire world are welcome to do so, but the consumer with a sensitive issue can get the private channel needed for one-on-one assistance.
–Mike Pinkerton, COO/General Counsel