We may never get an edit button, but Twitter is allowing conversations to be held on its platform between a much more limited number of users from today.
As The Verge reports, Twitter started testing a limited reply feature back in May, but has seen fit to roll it out to all iOS users in the latest version of the app (v8.30). Under the "What's New" section of the Twitter App Store page the social network explains, "In May, we tested a new way to have a chat with exactly who you want, so you can create and consume more meaningful exchanges. Now, everyone can try this new feature and choose who can reply to their Tweets."
While the chat can be limited in terms of participants, everyone can still view the conversation on Twitter. So it's more private in one way, but certainly not a private chat as experienced through direct messaging. Instead it's a way of allowing users to potentially avoid harrassment within a conversation, and for readers a way to experience a complete conversation without any interruptions from others piling in to have their say.
iOS users with the latest Twitter app installed can access the limited reply feature by tapping a new box that appears above the keyboard. This will bring up a "Who can reply" option, with the three choices being "Everyone," "People you follow," or "Only people you mention." This needs to be done for every tweet if you wish to continually limit your conversations as it will always default to everyone being able to reply.
It seems likely that the same feature will now appear for the Android Twitter app and desktop users, be that through the standard Twitter interface or Tweetdeck. However, for now it only seems to be active for iOS users.
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