( CNN ) -- Twitter users can now let any person , company or , presumably , drunken green monster send them private messages on the site . The feature appears to be rolling out gradually . Some users had the ability as of Tuesday , while others did n't . And it 's not automatic : Users will have to opt in to it to enable the new feature . Until now , people could send private messages on Twitter to people who follow them but not to others . The move comes as Twitter , which is wildly popular ( it crossed the 200 million-user mark in March ) but not yet profitable , prepares to offer its stock publicly . As word of the new feature rolled out , that had many users speculating , not always positively , about how companies could use the feature to spread the word about their products . `` Should be renamed 'Check this box if you would like 99 % more spam ! ' `` wrote a commenter on a story from tech site The Verge . In addition to allowing brands to send personal messages , or receive them , the new feature could be used by media sites to send news alerts . Twitter has experimented with a service that would send links to news articles to users privately . Early observations Tuesday of the change , which Twitter has not acknowledged publicly , were focusing on the potential upsides and downsides . `` Enabling this option could potentially mean open season on your Twitter inbox , '' wrote Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch , `` and that 's probably why it 's off by default -- but if dealing with a potential influx of spam is worth opening up a new channel of communication for you , then this is a welcome change indeed . ''
It is more direct messages open to people you do n't follow . You will have to opt in to the feature . Some see broader communication , while others see less .