Twitter has already removed the option that allowed users to receive direct messages from people they don’t follow, just over one month after the feature was introduced. This means that even if you opted in to accept DMs from anyone, you’ll have to go back to following people who you want to communicate privately with.

The feature always seemed like a slightly odd idea (who wants to receive direct messages from people they aren’t interested in following) but it did make some sense for certain users. For example, it allowed brands and businesses to accept private messages without having to follow all of their customers.

So why was it pulled? Well, Twitter hasn’t really explained the reason behind it, but it has said it is always testing new features — some of which may not turn into permanent fixture.

“As we’ve talked about before, we’re constantly working to make it even easier to follow what you care about, connect with people and discover something new on Twitter,” the company explains in a post on its blog, which doesn’t mention the direct messaging feature specifically.

“We also experiment with features that may never be released to everyone who uses Twitter.”

Clearly this particular feature didn’t work too well, or wasn’t as popular as Twitter hoped it would be. That’s a shame if you’ve already gotten used to having it around, but I’d imagine the large majority of you forgot it was there. I know I certainly did.

• ViaThe Next Web