As Twitter recently announced, the social platform has debuted a new “mute” feature that allows you to silence select users in your feed. Similar to hiding friends from your Facebook newsfeed – arguably one of Facebook’s most useful features – it allows you to avoid the awkward de-friending situation and minimize their social presence without their knowing about it.

Once you’ve muted users in your feed, their tweets and retweets will no longer be visible in your timeline and you won’t receive notifications from them. All you have to do is click “more” next to their tweet and then hit “mute @username.” Other perks are that you can unmute at any time, and muted users can still DM you so they won’t know you muted them.

The mute feature is particularly useful when someone you’re following begins rapid-fire tweeting from an event you have no interest in, or is involved in a protracted public conversation in which you’d rather not participate. The feature is great for businesspeople and born networkers, as it allows them to pay a new contact the courtesy of a Twitter follow, even when they’re not interested in consuming that new colleague’s posts in their main Twitter stream.”

TwitterMute2-e1404858638136

Here are 3 of the top reasons you might want to consider employing the Mute feature:

  1. The Popularity Mute—, When you’re trying to look popular but have no interest in hearing from specific followers, you can mute them. In this way, you’re essentially collecting followers but engaging less. Personally, instead of this tactic, we’d prefer you just use Twitter lists to keep track of specific folks you’re more interested in engaging with.

 

  1. The “Stop Live-Tweeting Every Single Event” Mute: let’s fact it; we all have a friend of two that feel like it’s incredibly urgent to live tweet everything from the Super Bowl to their cat’s birthday party. When you need to keep the relationship but can’t stand the unnecessary life streaming, the mute feature is a great way to go.

 

  1. The Breakup Mute: For when you don’t want to be reminded of an ex-significant other or business partner, but don’t want to the satisfaction of knowing you intentionally unfollowed them.

 

We’re curious: have you used the Mute feature yet? If not, have you ever been tempted to?

Muting on Twitter Social media Twitter Twitter Mute