This week, Twitter announced that it’s trying to ease that pain point by allowing users to accept DMs from any other Twitter user without following.

Additionally as part of this update, Twitter is now allowing users to respond to all DMs they receive regardless of the following status of the sender.

To make it easier for users to identify the accounts they can DM, the social media giant has added a new Direct Message button in its iPhone and Android apps that appears on the profiles of people users have the ability to message.

A blessing or curse for brands?

According to Twitter, this is just the beginning of an effort to improve its private messaging experience.

As Nhu Vuon, a Twitter engineer, stated in a blog post “we have lots more in the works to improve Direct Messages on Twitter, so that the private side of Twitter is just as fulfilling as the public side.”

While this effort will potentially benefit all Twitter users, the primary target may be businesses. As TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez details:

We had previously heard that this use case for brands and businesses was something Twitter wanted to focus on in the near future, as it would allow users and brands to communicate directly and privately without the hassle of the following request. This is important because many businesses use Twitter for customer support, and that can sometimes require the exchange of personal and private information, including financial info, which, for obvious reasons, needs to take place over DMs.

But brands will have to think carefully about whether or not they decide to open their accounts up to DMs.

On one hand, there are use cases for which this is desirable if not necessary. On the other hand, some brands could find themselves inundated with DMs. For those that can’t cope with the volume, that could create a customer experience problem.

One of the biggest concerns some brands will face is the potential for abuse. Twitter is trying to crack down on this, and businesses that opt to accept all DMs will retain the ability to block users they don’t want to communicate with.

However as Twitter evolves from being primarily a one-to-many channel to a platform equally capable of being one-to-many and one-to-one, brands should be prepared for all the issues they might encounter.