Twitter testing out new ‘Nearby’ feature: report

Twitter testing out new ‘Nearby’ feature: reportTwitter, one of the world's most popular social-networking services, is reportedly testing a new feature that lets users to see tweets posted in their local area in real time.

The feature, which has been aptly named "Nearby," shows a map of tweets posted by other users in the local area in a separate column in the company's native app. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), it shows tweets from other users regardless of the follow relationship among them.

However, the new feature works only for those users of the service who opt in to show their locations with their tweets. The company allowed users show their locations along with their tweets since the year of 2010.

The new feature will come automatically switched off in users' accounts to ensure their privacy. It means users will have to turn it on to let other users to see where they are posting tweets from.

The micro-blogging site turned down a request for a comment on the WSJ report. It just said that it is always testing new features through its Twitter Experiments program.

Last week, the company rolled back a change to its 'block' feature after users criticized the change saying it would make things worse. The change to the `block' feature would allow a user to delete remarks made by a 'blocked' user on their timeline, but the 'blocked' user would still be able to follow the user and respond to his/her messages.