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Microsoft has announced the new Xbox Friends and Followers Experience, which will be available to Xbox Insiders starting this week.
The Xbox Insider program allows Xbox users to test new features and provide feedback before they are released to a broader audience.
The new Friends and Followers Experience will allow users to send, accept, or delete friend requests, making it more straightforward to connect with others.
We’re re-introducing friend requests!
You will be able to send, accept, or delete friend requests, in addition to following or being followed by others.
We are testing with Xbox Insiders now and look forward to sharing more later this year on a full rollout. pic.twitter.com/dQCNEtGBtk
Friends will now be a two-way, invite-approved relationship, giving users more control and flexibility. Meanwhile, following someone will remain a one-way connection, allowing users to stay updated with shared content from another player, club, or game.
The update will be available to Xbox Insiders across all devices, including Xbox consoles, Windows PCs, and handheld devices. The company says it will roll out the update to all users “soon.”
Xbox deprecated the Friends and Followers experience over a decade ago due to criticism surrounding this capability: it often allowed strangers or bots to connect with users without warning, and its notification system wasn’t the best.
However, nowadays, Xbox has the chance to transform the Friends and Followers experience into something similar to Twitch, where Xbox users can create public profiles and let other gamers follow them.
Until then, however, Xbox assures players that they can manage their experience, security, and privacy.
With these updates, we are also adding new privacy and notification settings, letting you decide who can send you friend requests or follow your account and which notifications you receive.
So the Xbox Friends and Followers experience should be more stable, and less disturbing today. Either way, it lays the foundation for Xbox to experiment with different social settings, maybe even coming up with their own version of Twitch.
Xbox users are less enthusiastic, and while some of them are excited about the capability returning, most of them saw it as a nuissance to begin with. On Reddit, tens are sharing a common issue: the frustrating notification system.
Flavius is a writer and a media content producer with a particular interest in technology, gaming, media, film and storytelling.
He's always curious and ready to take on everything new in the tech world, covering Microsoft's products on a daily basis. The passion for gaming and hardware feeds his journalistic approach, making him a great researcher and news writer that's always ready to bring you the bleeding edge!
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