All the discussion on mute/pause vs. unfollow seems to miss the point of "mute".

I don't want a mute button because I'm afraid of some social stigma associated with unfollow. I want it for two simple reasons:

1. I don't want to have to remember who I temporarily unfollowed, and have to go find them again.

2. Once mute was implemented, it would be trivial to make unmute automatic.

As an example of #2: I'd love to mute a friend for the day each time he goes to a particular meeting -- he gets verbose and ranty and I don't care about that noise. If I could press "mute for 3 hours" about the time he starts tweeting about the meeting, then I don't need to do *anything else* to unmute him after he's done with his ranting.

I'd have no problem with people I've muted knowing that I've done so, and for how long -- in fact, I think that'd be a desirable feature.

Essentially, mute is a feature that makes temporarily unfollowing people a lot more user-friendly.