You Never Have To Unfollow Someone On Twitter Again

Get all the joys of unfollowing an annoying Twitter user without any of the guilt.

Starting May 12, Twitter users can "mute" other users in their feed by blocking their unwanted content from view. Twitter announced the change in a blog post Monday and described what muting a user means:

In the same way you can turn on device notifications so you never miss a Tweet from your favorite users, you can now mute users you’d like to hear from less. 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. 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 muted user will not know that you’ve muted them, and of course you can unmute at any time.

Muting is similar to Facebook's "unfollow" feature, which allows users to hide a person's content from their timeline without having to unfriend him.

Twitter users have met the news with equal parts skepticism and excitement:

Remember, muting someone doesn't hide your content from that person; it just helps block out every day annoyances, like your friend's "Game of Thrones" spoilers.

TechCrunch points out that some third party apps, like Tweetbot for instance, have had this sort of function in place for quite some time. Some have even extended the mute feature to include hashtags and keywords. It's unknown whether those added functions will be available in the Twitter mute feature.

Do you like the new mute feature? How do you plan to use it? Let us know in the comments below!