Twitter ‘nudges’ towards Facebook

January 24th, 2009

Have you seen the ‘nudge’ feature on Twitter before?

I got an email about a new follower so popped over to their profile. On the right hand side, there were 3 options rather than the usual two: ‘message’, ‘block’ and also ‘nudge’.

After a quick search, I read about a Twitter rep explaining the nudge function:

We’ve decided to display the “nudge” link only if it’s possible for the person to receive it. Going forward, you will only see the nudge link on a profile if the person you’d like to nudge:

* is following you
* has a registered phone with notifications set to ON
* does not have a “sleeping” phone (some people set sleep times on phones to avoid messages during beauty sleep. Sleep time will always be honored, nudges or no!)

I’d missed this completely and mostly because the UK doesn’t have proper SMS support on Twitter right now.

It’s a useful feature, but it’s far from Facebook’s pokes and ninjas; more like the ‘nudge’ feature on Microsoft’s IM client (remember IM? Ah those were the days) which was a far-from-gentle reminder to someone that you were waiting to hear from them.

On a related note it looks like we in the UK will get Twitter SMS back, as announced by Biz this week and covered by Zee amongst others. Direct messages to mobile make Twitter into a really useful real-time facility for things like spontaneous Tweetups.