Twitter now includes a direct message feature that allows you to receive or send message from people not in your following list, which is a feature that facebook has long used and is still using. As long as you turn on the function that allows you receive messages from people you don't follow and enable you to either "Delete" or "Accept" inbound messages, this new DM feature will work for you too.

Most times, on twitter and other social media's, you might want to chat with someone without following or sending him or her a friend request probably because you don't want to get feeds from such person's, so the best way to do that is to locate the person's profile and send him or her a private message. Before now, this feature had not been introduced on twitter, but today you can now send direct messages to friends without following.

You will not be able to see or receive feeds, posts, images and videos from people you don't follow, which is what most of us don't like.

Messages and conversation's from people you don't follow will be flagged as 'Request' in the message tab, making it look like a friend request message, so implies to conversation's from new groups too.

In conclusion, this feature enables you to get messages from people you don't follow and also prevents you from receiving unwanted updates or tweets from them too until you click 'Follow'.

Source: http://www.inforetweet.com.ng/2017/05/twitter-now-includes-direct-message-request-feature.html

Info from INFO Retweet Information And Tech Tutorials inforetweet.com.ng