"Twitter for professionals" is getting ready to be mainstreamed

Twitter, which began testing its "Twitter for Professionals" with some handpicked businesses in the US earlier this year, now seems ready to push it to its regular users globally.

Today, well-known product researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who goes by the Twitter handle @wongmjane, put out a public link for "Twitter for professionals".

The link did not seem to work for many who had clicked from their mobiles. For those using Twitter from their browser, the link did open, which suggested that Twitter is pretty close to rolling it out.

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This is what "Twitter for Professionals" may look like

The link led to a pop-up to get started with the message, "Twitter for Professionals: Get access to the tools you need to better connect with your audience, grow your brand, and increase your profits."

Once users click on "Get Started", they are led to the next stage where they have to select a category of their area of professionalism.

The message read: "Choose the category to display on your profile. Pick the one that best describes your account. This will be shown on your public profile."

Once users picked a category, the next choice was to "Select an Account Type". 

Twitter instruction for this read: "Choose the one that best aligns with your profession. Don’t worry, you can change this later."

But the choice was only two: Business or Creator.

As it happened, beyond this point there was no further choices, as the page gets stuck with it. Obviously, it is a work in progress, and further details are expected to emerge shortly.

Twitter, when it began testing the feature in the US, had described the feature as: "Professional Profiles are a new tool that will allow businesses, non-profits, publishers, and creators — anyone who uses Twitter for work — to display specific information about their business directly on their profile."  

Twitter has been toying with the idea of business and professional profiles for some time, and previewed some of them in its Analyst Day presentation.

Allowing separate business or professional profiles, as Facebook and Instagram have done, could throw up a lot of opportunities for Twitter, and others who use the platform for their businesses and professions.

Now you can change who can reply to you after the tweet

Meanwhile, Twitter has tweaked its "Who Can Reply To The Tweets" feature that it unveiled last August.

Hitherto, Twitter users could limit who could reply to tweets when they put it out. This choice had to be made at the time of tweeting. 

Now, Twitter has tinkered with the feature, and allows users to change their choice post facto. That is they can decide who can reply to the tweet retrospectively too.

This change can help users who want to shut down abusive trolls or polemical responses after the tweet is out in the public timeline.

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