San Francisco, May 21 (IANS): To help people avoid unwanted replies that flood their tweets, Twitter has launched a new test where the users can have three options to choose from who can reply and join the conversation before they tweet.

You will be able to choose from three options: everyone (standard Twitter, and the default setting), only people you follow, or only people you mention.

Tweets with the latter two settings will be labelled and the reply icon will be grayed out so that it's clear for people if they can't reply.

"People who can't reply will still be able to view, Retweet, Retweet with Comment, and like these Tweets," the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

For now, only a limited group of people globally on Twitter for iOS, Android, and twitter.com can Tweet with these settings, but everyone can see these conversations.

"Since last year, we've been working to give people more control over their conversations starting with the ability to hide replies," said Twitter.

In addition to this, Twitter is making it easier to read all conversations around a Tweet with a new layout for replies and more accessible Retweets with comments.