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[Twitter Update] Twitter's New (Partially) Algorithmic Timeline Is Here
Today Twitter has become quite a bit more like Facebook in its quest to make the service more appealing for new or casual users.
It will now display a selection of what Twitter thinks might be the most interesting or popular tweets at the top of your timeline, rather than showing you the most recent ones, as it has done traditionally.
Here's how the new timeline works
(according to Twitter's post)
You flip on the feature in your settings (more on that below); then when you open Twitter after being away for a while, the Tweets you're most likely to care about will appear at the top of your timeline – still recent and in reverse chronological order.
The rest of the Tweets will be displayed right underneath, also in reverse chronological order, as always.
At any point, just pull-to-refresh to see all new Tweets at the top in the live, up-to-the-second experience you already know and love.
(NOTE: I don't have the option to turn on/off the new timeline in my Twitter on the web settings yet. Do you?)
Twitter Timeline settings
You can adjust your setting for Show me the best Tweets first by doing the following:
On twitter.com:
- Log in to your account on twitter.com and go to your Account settings page.
- Under Content, look for Timeline and toggle the box next to Show me the best Tweets first to change the setting.
Twitter for iOS:
- On your profile, tap the gear icon and select Settings.
- Tap the account whose settings you’d like to adjust.
- Under Timeline, tap Timeline personalization.
- Next to Show me the best Tweets first, tap to turn it off.
Twitter for Android:
- Tap the overflow icon
- Tap Settings.
- Tap Timeline.
- Next to Show me the best Tweets first, uncheck the box to turn it off.
This update is available on Twitter’s iOS and Android apps, as well as the Web.
How Is This Different From “While You Were Away?”
MarketingLand.com did a quick interview with Twitter’s VP of revenue product, Ameet Ranadive, about the new Twitter's timeline.
According to the interview, Ranadive says the new timeline is an extension of the “While you were away” timeline feature introduced about a year ago that shows a group of top tweets by followed accounts that occurred since the user last visited Twitter.
“While you were away” “laid the foundation for this change,” explained Ranadive, “We saw those changes drove improvements in engagement rates, and we have been tweaking how we determine what Tweets to feature with this new iteration of the timeline.”
What Signals Are Being Used To Choose Featured Past Tweets?
Twitter says it looks at how users interact with billions of tweets and match those behaviors against users’ past activity “to predict which Tweets they might like to see most.”
These signals include the accounts users interact with, tweets they typically engage with, their interests and what’s going on in their network. All the tweets selected for the top of the timeline will be from accounts that a user is following.
More FAQs in this post at MarketingLand.com.
Last Friday, BuzzFeed reported that an algorithmic timeline was coming.
This certainly got the Twitter community worked up and led to the massively trending hashtag #RIPTwitter.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responded in a tweet saying: “Regarding #RIPTwitter: I want you all to know we're always listening. We never planned to reorder timelines next week.”
The new timeline is certainly not a complete revamp of the Twitter timeline as rumored (not yet anyway), but it's certainly a decent compromise.
What think you? Thumbs up or down?
Ana Hoffman
TrafficGenerationCafe.com
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Looks OK so far Ana - less projectile vomit to wade through :)
Fantastic read, Ana!! Off to share it :)
I've got the setting. I just enabled it. I'm waiting to see what it looks like. Though, if it is an extension of "while you were away", I don't think it will be any different. Actually, I think that feature is kind of useful. I also agree with Ashley that it's a nice compromise. They're not saying, "you have to see these popular tweets and only these popular tweets". They're just saying, "here's some stuff that happened while you were gone that we think you'll be interested in". Again, though, I'm waiting to see what it actually looks like, before I make a judgement call. :)
sounds like a decent way to throttle the firehose