Twitter not planning to reorder timelines, says CEO Dorsey

New York, Feb 7: Rumours surfaced that Twitter might be introducing a major change as early as next week, but those who were outraged at this possibility can breathe a sigh of relief.

Following a report that said the social media site was planning to make a change to the way users see other tweets, co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey reassured users that this was not the case.

Right now, the timeline on Twitter's site is simply based on what time a tweet was sent out. The report said that a new algorithm based on what tweets the site thinks users want to see was in the works.

One of the big draws for Twitter, especially in the news industry, is that things are chronological and that makes it rather easy to find out when things are happening. When the company reports ear nings next week, the first number analysts will look at is monthly active users. If this were to change and a number of the monthly active users turn to other platfor ms instead, it would be a huge problem for Twitter.

After the article was posted, #RIPTwitter became the No. 1 trending hashtag on the website, showing just how upset some of the most loyal users are. It's a similar reaction to the one we saw when rumors surfaced of a 10,000character count versus the current 140-character limit.

Here’s a quick sample of the reactions:

This tweet shows Twitter shares and what they did following other recent changes:

Even “Regina George” had some things to say about it:

This user lamented about how he feels Twitter always seems to change the wrong things:

Shares of the tech company have lost more than half of their value over the past year, with analysts continuing to get more bearish on the fir m’s prospects despite Dorsey becoming CEO again late last year.

Stifel analyst Scott Devitt downgraded it last week on concer ns that it isn’t a sustainable public company. Currently, 55 percent of analysts have hold ratings on shares while 38 percent have buys and 7 percent have sells. The average price target is $28.84 versus $33.97 at the end of 2015. Shares closed at $15.72 on Friday.

Bloomberg