Twitter goes Facebook, adds option to show best Tweets at the top
Twitter has announced a pretty significant change to the way you can read your timeline going forward. The change involves putting what Twitter feels are the most important Tweets to have come in since you last visited at the top of your timeline.
Twitter didn’t go into detail about how the system would determine which Tweets are considered “important,” but we imagine it has something to do with likes, retweets and replies. The important Tweets will show up in reverse chronological order just like your regular timeline does, and scrolling further down will take you to your timeline as you know and love.
Facebook did something similar on their own social network, and was originally met with tons of criticism. Many people found it annoying that their posts were showing up out of order, and Facebook even eventually took away the option of changing the way your timeline is presented to you.
But that change actually ended up being great for Facebook, and people started using it even more.. Surfacing the most interesting and important posts makes it more likely that you’ll stay engaged. I can’t tell you how many times I look at Twitter to see an endless stream of stuff I absolutely don’t care about, and it keeps me from enjoying it. You can tell by my personal Twitter account that I’ve grown extremely bored of it all.
I can’t tell you how many times I look at Twitter to see an endless stream of stuff I absolutely don’t care about, and it keeps me from enjoying it. You can tell by my personal Twitter account that I’ve grown extremely bored of it all.
And that’s what this move is all about for Twitter — keeping things engaging, fresh, and interesting. Kudos points for giving you the option not to use it, too. The feature should be available starting today, so long as you head to your timeline settings to enable it (find out how to do that on each platform right here, but note that it may not be showing up for everyone just yet). Let us know what you think of it!
[via Twitter]