Twitter Tweaks Timeline Hoping To Keep Users Coming Back More Often
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Over the weekend, the possibility of an algorithm-driven timeline upset some users, who expressed their frustrations on the service with an #RIP Twitter hashtag. Today, the social network is rolling out a new feature that will show tweets out of order.
Twitter has pushed out an update that makes its much-talked-about timeline redesign official.
The company announced in a a blog post the new feature will show tweets that are sorted based on relevancy, rather than chronology, at the top of your timeline.
Here's how it works. You flip on the feature in your settings; 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.
The social network hopes to make it easier for people to find interesting conversations faster, which in turn may keep them coming back to the service more often.
The new feature is similar to "while you were away," which also brings back older tweets that could help users see conversations on the service that they had missed.
In coming weeks, users will see a notification in the timeline when Twitter automatically turns on the feature but it can be turned off in settings.
