Dive Brief:

• Twitter has announced a new feature that could change the way brands are seen on Twitter — the "mute" feature. 
• Initiating the mute feature on an account removes any of that user's tweets from a timeline and prevents any push or SMS notifications from that user. 
• The muted users can still interact with a follower that has muted them, but that user will not see any of the interaction. Muted accounts will not be notified they have been muted. 

Dive Insight: 

This feature change takes away one of Twitter's advantages for brands — that their updates would always appear in news feeds. This move makes the site a little more like Facebook, which filters posts based on its algorithm. Now brands can no longer be sure every tweet or interaction is reaching a user. It remains to be seen whether tweeters would be interested in muting accounts rather than just unfollowing them, but brands should be especially cautious about over-tweeting now to avoid being muted.