Flock could be Twitter’s answer to Instagram’s Close Friends feature

In July last year, Twitter showed off three concept features that aimed to give users greater flexibility and control over their tweets and profiles. One of these features aimed to help users make their tweets visible to only a small group of people, much like Instagram’s “Close Friends” feature. At the time, Twitter called this feature “Trusted Friends.” But it could soon make its way to users under a new name — Twitter Flock.

An APK teardown can often predict features that may arrive in a future update of an application, but it is possible that any of the features we mention here may not make it in a future release. This is because these features are currently unimplemented in the live build and may be pulled at any time by the developers in a future build.

A teardown of Twitter for Android version 9.27.0-beta.2 has revealed new strings pointing towards the upcoming feature. The strings clearly state that the feature will let users limit the visibility of their tweets to a small group of people. Like Instagram’s Close Friends feature, Twitter will give users the option to add users to their “Twitter Flock” and only members of the Flock will be able to see and reply to the tweets.

<string name="trusted_friend_tab_label_inner_circle">Inner Circle</string>
<string name="trusted_friend_tab_label_recommended">Recommended</string>
<string name="trusted_friends_add_button_label">Add</string>
<string name="trusted_friends_appbar_back">Back</string>
<string name="trusted_friends_appbar_done">Done</string>
<string name="trusted_friends_focal_message">You can see and reply to this Tweet because %s has added you to their Twitter Flock</string>
<string name="trusted_friends_list_management_description">People won’t be notified when you edit your Twitter Flock.</string>
<string name="trusted_friends_list_management_description_label_link">How it works</string>
<string name="trusted_friends_remove_button_label">Remove</string>
<string name="trusted_friends_timeline_message">You can see this Tweet because %s has added you to their Twitter Flock</string>
<string name="trusted_friends_timeline_reply">Everyone in %s’s Twitter Flock can see this reply</string>
<string name="trusted_friends_timeline_title">You’re in the Twitter Flock</string>
<string name="trusted_friends_title">Twitter Flock</string>

Prolific app reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi has managed to enable the feature ahead of the rollout and shared the following screenshot. As you can see, the feature will let you add up to 150 people to your Twitter Flock and share tweets privately with them. Only members who are part of the Flock will be able to view and reply to these tweets. Users will also get the option to add or remove people from their Flock at any time, and people won’t be notified when removed from a Flock. However, as the aforementioned strings reveal, Twitter will notify people when users add them to a Flock.

#Twitter continues to work on Twitter Flock by adding an explanation of how it works

You can choose up to 150 people to include in your Twitter Flock
People won’t be notified if you remove them from the list pic.twitter.com/xtGcDiHgxS

— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) January 21, 2022

The feature is currently a work in progress and it isn’t live in the latest Twitter release. Twitter hasn’t shared any official information about the rollout so far, but we’ll make sure to let you know as soon as it shows up in an upcoming beta update.

The post Flock could be Twitter’s answer to Instagram’s Close Friends feature appeared first on xda-developers.

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