Twitter Is Updating Direct Messages With Read Receipts, Typing Indicators & Link Previews

Twitter has revealed it is updating its Direct Messages feature.
Last week Twitter announced it will be changing its Direct Messages algorithms, aiming to make the feature more competitive against other messaging services like iMessage, Facebook Messenger & WhatsApp.
The new update includes the introduction of read receipts, so users can see when their messages have been seen by the recipient.
In addition to this, in group messages, this feature will show who out of the group has seen the content, or say “seen by everyone”, as with on Facebook Messenger.
This feature will be automatically introduced, so users will have to manually disable the tool if they don’t want people to see they have read messages.
The update also brings typing indicators to the platform, so that users know when someone is replying to them – a feature that is also used by applications like Messenger and iMessage.
Twitter is also introducing link previews within Direct Messages, meaning users will not have to leave Twitter to see what the links are about.
This is the second big change to Direct Messages in the past year, after Twitter removed the 140 character for the private messaging feature last summer.