Twitter’s Testing Advanced Search Tools for Direct Messages

Twitter looks to be working on the next stage of search for direct messages, with a new DM content search option found in the back-end code of the app.

As you can see in this example, posted by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, Twitter appears to be developing a more advanced message search option, which would enable you to search all of your DMs for certain keywords or mentions, helping you to sort through your chats for specific topics.

Which would be a big advance on the ‘Search for People and Groups’ DM search update that Twitter added back in 2019, which enables you to find DM chats based on the usernames of those involved.

Which is handy, but it’s not as helpful as contextual search would be, providing the capacity to filter your DMs based on mentions and keywords, greatly enhancing the search process.

Twitter has experimented with more advanced DM search features in the past, like searching in a specific DM thread for shared media and links.

But the capacity to search by message content would be the most significant development. There are, of course, privacy considerations that need to be accounted for within such process, but keyword search for DM text would be a helpful addition, that could make Twitter DMs a more useful tool.

It could also be a good addition for your Twitter customer service efforts. Providing more search tools could help to streamline your DM response – for example, you could search for all users who’ve asked a question about a product, and provide relevant updates as they come to hand.

There’s a range of ways it could be used. We don’t have any further info to go on as yet, and it could still be a long way off being a reality. But it does seem like Twitter is looking to improve its DM search tools soon.