Mute annoying Twitter friends
Instead of worrying about offending someone with an unfollow or blocking them on Twitter, take advantage of the new mute feature.
Anytime we are involved in anything relatively social, be it in person or through an online network, there's bound to be someone who gets under your skin.
In the case of Twitter, following someone might seem like a good idea until you realize how much they tweet about random nonsense. Unfollowing or blocking someone is always a solid choice, but if that annoying person is a friend -- or even a family member -- either act could come across as rude.
Facebook users have been able to remove people from their News Feed for some time now, but Twitter lacked an official option for a similar feature. Up until now, third-party apps had to implement a "mute" feature to remove tweets from specific users, or tweets containing a hashtag or keyword from a timeline.
On Monday, Twitter announced it was releasing Mute across its official apps. Starting with the website, followed by activating it on iOS and Android apps, you should find the Mute option available to you in the coming days.
Twitter is slowly rolling out the mute feature in it's mobile apps. Once it's active for your account, you can access it by viewing a user's profile, tapping on the settings gear, and selecting Mute. The other method (pictured above) can be accessed by long-pressing on a Tweet and selecting Mute from the list of options.
For those without access to the new feature via the mobile apps, you can access it through the Twitter website. The same process found in the mobile apps also applies to the site. For example, you can mute someone via the "More..." option when viewing a tweet in your timeline. The other method requires you to visit the user's profile page, click on the Settings icon, then select Mute.
After muting someone, the mute icon will display next to the settings gear. When red, the person is muted. When grey (as seen above) the person is not muted.
Muted users will never know you've removed their tweets from your timeline. As far as they know, you still find them incredibly funny and the best tweeter on the Internet. You'll still see notifications from muted users if they send you a direct message, mention, or favorite a tweet. However, you won't receive push notifications for said actions. Happy muting!