Twitter just made Direct Messages more useful for brands by adding buttons

The breadth of activities you can complete via bots on Twitter is about to get a lot wider. On Tuesday, June 13, Twitter began rolling out new functionality to its Direct Message bots that will allow developers to establish concrete actions, which means that your Twitter bots will soon look a lot more like Facebook bots. As of today, June 13, Twitter bots will allow people to buy items or services, link to websites, or catalyze other calls-to-action or conversational cues.

The lack of such a feature may come as a surprise to social media users, who have long become accustomed to bots that can actually do things. And while VentureBeat points out that call-to-action buttons have been integrated into Twitter ads for quite some time now, this is the first time that these action buttons will be added to DMs.

“Anyone can create an experience within Direct Messages, whether it’s a business or an organization, as long as you use our APIs or use a tool which is built on our APIs,” a Twitter spokesperson told VentureBeat in an email. That said, this new functionality will likely be most useful for brands and advertisers, who are looking to improve customer service or customer engagement.