Twitter has unveiled a new interface for its direct messages on the web. The new interface, announced just as the platform was experiencing a massive hack, allows you to send and receive DMs without leaving your timeline.

With a new Facebook-style messaging box
The new interface is similar to whats offered on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Image: Twitter
Twitter has unveiled a new interface for its direct messages on the web, allowing you to send and receive DMs without having to leave your timeline. While currently you have to open up a separate section of Twitters website to look at your DMs, now youll be able to access them from a pop-up window to the bottom right of your timeline. From Twitters video, it looks like a similar interface to what the likes of Facebook and LinkedIn currently offer for DMs on their platforms.
It looks like a decent improvement for the platforms messaging interface, but Twitter ended up announcing the feature at the worst possible time, during the worst hack to ever hit the platform. Twitters official account announced the roll out of the feature at 4:51pm ET, around half an hour after Tesla CEO Elon Musks Twitter account was hacked to promote a bitcoin scam.
By the end of the day, high profile accounts from the likes of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Apple had all tweeted similar messages, leading Twitter to eventually take the unprecedented step of preventing all verified accounts from tweeting entirely. The social network eventually confirmed that its internal tools had been compromised, contributing to the hack. Suffice it to say, the event took all the wind out of the sails of Twitters product announcement.
ok theres also a huge bitcoin scam going on though
Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) July 15, 2020
The new interface for Twitter DMs, which appears to have been in development since at least April this year, follows the introduction of emoji reactions in January, along with a new DM search feature that came to its iOS app last year.
Twitter says the new feature is rolling out on web.