Popular social networking website Twitter introduced on Thursday a new feature that will allow users to email tweets directly from their account.
The San Francisco-based firm announced the latest updates to its site through its official blog titled 'Sharing Tweets just got easier'.
"We're introducing the ability to email a Tweet directly from twitter.com -- a feature that will be rolling out to everyone over the coming weeks," engineer Stefan Filip said in the post.
The new 'share this tweet via email' feature will give people, who are not part of Twitter, access to the website.
"You can retweet any (Twitter messages) to your Twitter followers, but sometimes you want to share with another group, like your college roommates or your parents or a friend who isn't yet on Twitter," Filip added.
Although retweeting messages to non-twitter members or groups is a remarkably innovative feature, it has its own demerits with regards to rising security concerns and privacy. The latter part of the article will focus on the rising security concerns and privacy issues for the existing members of Twitter, as a result of this massive change.
Twitter will roll out the feature in the next few days. The email services can be accessed by clicking on the 'More' icon which is next to the 'Reply', 'Retweet' and 'Favorite' buttons. Users also have the flexibility to add their own comments before they send their tweet emails to anyone.
Is the new Feature Rising Security concerns?
The latest update can also be viewed as its marketing strategy to reach more number of people. However, the employment of the new email service on the website raises questions on its security.
Even as the latest roll out is expected to spread the Twitter popularity among people, the risk of ramification goes higher, especially when there is an additional feature like email. Users can edit and erase the tweets, but deleting emails is not easy.
Besides, there is the rising concern with anonymity of the user who is either sharing the confidential tweet, photos and other information over e-mail or the person who is receiving the tweet remotely via the e-mail. The other major issue is that the virus and other malicious threats can get passed through illegitimate or infected e-mails, as there is no proper governance over encrypted messages.
Many user tweets made headlines over the years. Last week saw several Twitter users sending out hate tweets following Barack Obama's victory in the US Presidential elections.
According to First Post, in Britain alone hundreds of citizens are cuffed every year for misusing the online platform. As Twitter reaches to a greater audience, higher are the chances of abuse.
Electronic mails are not fortified with security. The service was designed after considering the peer-to-peer network - messages which passes from one server to another. The addition of the new email features on Twitter alerts users to take their tweets and corresponding emails responsibly.
