Before officially releasing new features or services, Twitter prefers to test them on the public. Sometimes,the soon-to-be public company won't even take credit for such "experiments", according to venturebeat.com.

That was the question surrounding "Event Parrot", which sends automatic news updates directly to users' accounts. Twitter designer Paul Stamatiou confirmed his company's involvement with this tweet at 1:13 PM on Thursday:

"Ssshh.. we're testing a new Twitter experiment. All you have to do is follow @EventParrot. It'll DM you with breaking news."

When the government ends their shutdown or if elephants ever learn how to understand the pointing gesture, Twitter users will receive a direct message, Venture Beat reported.

Originally, Event Parrot didn't have the blue checkmark badge next to its headline (see below pic), which other experiments, such as "Magic Recommendations", did. Subscribers of Magic Recommendations receive suggestions on who to follow. It is an "official Twitter experiment", according to Venture Beat.

Event Parrot had few fooled. Most believed it was Twitter-sponsored creation. When asked previously, Twitter was coy.

"We don't have anything to share on the record here," a spokesperson said.

But the success of "The Parrot" and its 16,000 plus followers was too big to deny. Before Twitter's announcement on Thursday afternoon, Venture Beat columnist John Koetsier praised Parrot's reach.

"If it is an actual Twitter experiment, it's an ingenious one that further brings Twitter into its sweet spot of 'what's happening now' and allows Twitter users to keep up to date with current world events without actually having to follow CNN, the BBC, and other major news organizations," wrote Koetsier. "And, as such, it's a interesting attempt at news curation."

Twitter will continue to run experiments in the future, reported Venture Beat. If they're all as successful as Event Parrot and Magic Recommendations, why shouldn't they?

"In recent months, that trend has picked up -- so much so that it's rare for a day to go by when we're not releasing at least one experiment," Twitter's Alex Roetter said. "We ... experiment with features that may never be released to everyone who uses Twitter ... they help us decide what not to do -- which is important as we work to keep Twitter simple while improving the user experience."