Company adds twist to timeline
Twitter launched a new kind of timeline Wednesday — one that displays tweets using a Facebook- like algorithm.
The change, which sparked objections last week and caused the hashtag # RIPTwitter to trend globally, is opt- in for now. Though Twitter plans to make the feature a default setting in coming weeks, users will be able to opt out and revert to the traditional reverse chronological timeline.
If a user enables the option to “show me the best tweets first,” a handful of non- chronological tweets will appear atop the timeline. The only indication that they are out of order will be the time stamps on the tweets. Users may see as many as a dozen such tweets before their timeline resumes its reverse chronological order.
Twitter hasn’t outlined the factors that determine which tweets it will push out to its users in the new feature — a lack of transparency that has created mistrust among some users.
In its Wednesday announcement, Twitter’s senior engineering manager Mike Jahr said they will be a sample of the “most important tweets from the people you follow.”
Analysts have not been optimistic about the new timeline’s ability to secure more users — or keep the ones Twitter already has.
The new timeline feature is the biggest change Twitter has seen since Jack Dorsey returned as CEO last year.