The Customer Strikes Back: Twitter Unveils Mute Button

Imagine the nerve of those insolent peasants! Thinking that just because they pay to use a service that doing so entitles them to some say in what messages they receive. 

Don't they realize such power belongs only to those who make money from the web?

The news that Twitter has joined Facebook and others in permitting limited muting of postings from those they consider annoying seems, on the face of it, a subtle but amusing concession to those who dont want to disconnect for fear of giving offense, of being unfriended in turn and losing followers  - or of causing familial/commercial harm (especially awkward with relatives, clients and bosses).

The more threatening business implication, however, is that this is yet another assertion of individual rights by consumers and citizens tired of intrusions into what they define as their personal space. Marketers are right to worry that this is probably the first of many steps to balance the relationship between consumers and sellers of interconnectedness. Revenue impact to follow.

A broader implication is that this further reinforces the well documented societal tendency to tune out anything or anyone not either in agreement with one's own beliefs and/or something or one who is not sufficiently melifluously in tune with one's personal vibe. Try as we might to eliminate all unpleasantness from our lives, it's like that elusive end of history: distractions and annoyances are part of the fabric of our lives, attempts to pretend they dont exist merely makes us less capable of dealing with them. JL

Harrison Weber reports in Venture Beat:

Twitter unveiled its widely-rumored mute button, giving anyone the power to silence over-active Twitter users in a couple of clicks.
According to Twitter, this feature is slightly less severe than a full-on block, and should help prevent over-active users (like yours truly) from taking over your feed. As Twitter wrote, “Muting a user on Twitter means their Tweets and Retweets will no longer be visible in your home timeline, and you will no longer receive push or SMS notifications from that user.”Unlike with a full user block, Twitter says, “The muted user will still be able to fave, reply to, and retweet your Tweets; you just won’t see any of that activity in your timeline.”
The feature first appeared for some Twitter users last week. Muting remains a popular feature in third-party apps like Tweetbot and Tweetdeck.
Available on iPhones, Android devices, and the Web, Twitter claims that muting adds a new layer of curation to the service. Luckily, Twitter doesn’t notify users when you mute them, as that would be quite awkward. According to Twitter:

The muted user will not know that you’ve muted them, and of course you can unmute at any time.
To mute a user from a Tweet on your iOS or Android device or on Twitter for web tap more and then mute @username. To mute someone from their profile page, tap the gear icon on the page and choose mute @username.

Facebook offers a similar feature in its own news feed.
If you don’t see the feature yet, don’t panic. It’s rolling out over the coming weeks to everyone.