Twitter Experiments With Advanced Search Features for Direct Messages

With a new DM content search option uncovered in the back-end code of the app, Twitter appears to be working on the next level of direct message search.

As you can see in this screenshot from app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, Twitter appears to be working on a more advanced message search feature that would allow you to search all of your direct messages for specific keywords or mentions, making it easier to sort through your conversations for specific topics. This would be a significant improvement over Twitter's 'Search for People and Groups' DM search upgrade from 2019, which allows you to find DM talks based on the usernames of individuals participating.

This is useful, but it's not as useful as contextual search, which allows you to filter your DMs based on mentions and terms, substantially improving the search experience. In the past, Twitter has experimented with more advanced DM search options, such as searching for shared images and links within a given DM thread.

The ability to search by message content, on the other hand, would be the most significant advancement. Of course, there are privacy concerns to consider in such a process, but a keyword search for DM content would be a valuable addition that may make Twitter DMs a more usable tool.

It can be a good addition to your Twitter customer care efforts as well. More search features could help simplify your DM answer - for example, you could search for all users who have asked a query about a product and respond with pertinent updates as they become available.