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Twitter Debuts New 'Message Button'

by Melony Roy

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Twitter is rolling out a new feature that lets you instantly share a tweet via direct message.

Twitter is adding a new button so that it's easier to send tweets to another user within a direct message.

The new icon is a small envelope that appears next to the heart-shaped "Like" button. It will automatically attach the tweet to a DM which you can then send to another user.

This is a relatively small update because you could already send tweets via direct message, it just required more steps.

Twitter says the popularity of DMs has increased: "We've seen the number of messages sent grow over 60% in 2015. And the number of Tweets shared privately has grown even faster, at 200% in just the second half of last year."

Twitter has been slowly upgrading direct messaging: adding group messages, video sharing and GIF sharing. It has also increased the character length beyond 140 characters.

The Message button is available now on Twitter for iOS and Android.

More information is available on Twitter's official blog, here.

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