Does Twitter's New Mute Feature Address Disney, Salesforce Concerns?

Twitter Inc TWTR is slowly and steadily taking its fight to the camp of online bullies. After leaking a teaser in late October, the company confirmed through a blog post on Tuesday that it would roll out the new mute feature to appear under notifications in the coming days.

New Mute Feature To Roll Out Soon

Although the company has had a feature called mute to allow users mute accounts from which they don't want to see tweets, the expansion of the mute feature currently in the works would allow users to mute keywords, phrases and even entire conversations they don't want to see notifications about.

Reporting, Enforcement

Twitter said in the post that it has made progress in three focus areas, namely controls, reporting and enforcement. The mute feature is seen by the company as a reporting tool for users themselves, or for others, on hateful conduct.

The company also clarified that it has re-trained its support teams on its policies, implemented an ongoing refresher program and improved its internal tools and systems to facilitate better enforcement.

Can Mute Feature Mute Potential Suitors' Concerns?

Twitter has been widely speculated as a takeover target. Bloomberg reported in early October that top bidders in the fray have lost interest, leading the company mull a divestiture of assets not central to its core business. With the new feature likely to address the security issue that has been plaguing the company for a long time, will the deal talks now resurface?

Salesforce.com, inc. CRM, which reportedly approached Twitter in early July with a "literally no premium deal," had backed off after shareholders prodded the company not to proceed with it. Walt Disney Co DIS, with its strict ethical and moral code may have been put off by the rampant trolls in the platform warding off users. The deal talks that had tapered off since early October may now regain momentum.

Cuban Left Unimpressed With New Feature

Billionaire and owner of NBA's Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban seems to be skeptical of the feature's viability in weeding out hate content. In a tweet Cuban said, "Twitter doesn't understand it's [sic] hate problem - Rolls Out meaningless Anti-Harassment Tools."

Jack Dorsey, one of the founders and who is currently helming Twitter, was quick to respond with a tweet that read "Progress, not perfection. We're did [sic]* a necessary reset and now going to improve every day. We're learning faster."

All said and done, time is running out for the social networking site, which originally had a 140-character restriction but has since then relaxed it to exclude photo, GIF, video, poll or quotes. Slowing user growth, which is seen as a function of a rising targeted abuse, is sinking the company. The latest quarterly results were a testament to the flailing fortunes of the company, which is not able to rally enough advertisers behind it to shore up its top line.

The company recently announced elimination of about 9 percent of the positions, in a bid to boost profitability. For convincing one of its former suitors to buy into it, Twitter has to take actions on a war footing to eliminate the infamous culture of bullying and trolls.

At Time Of Writing

• Shares of Twitter were down 1.40 percent at $18.72.
• Salesforce.com was down 0.49 percent to $73.66.
• Disney was advancing 1.34 percent to $99.01.

*Editor Note: regarding the [sic], see @jack's timely reply here.