Twitter Starts Rolling Out Algorithmic Timeline, Support Will Be Enabled First
Today Twitter is embarking on the biggest change to its service in years. Users will start seeing an algorithmic timeline over the next few weeks as an alternative to the purely chronological view we have now.
For most of its history, Twitter has used a reverse chronological timeline, always showing you the newest tweets first. It is convenient for getting the latest news, but it makes it much more difficult for ordinary users to get into them. For a while, Twitter has been testing a feature called While You Were Away, which displays a few tweets that you may have missed since your last login. The new chronological timeline is a continuation of this.
However, the new timeline will not be purely algorithmic. As The Verge informs about the not quite final version of the new timeline , when you scroll down the first time you open the app, smart suggestions will be displayed, but as soon as you scroll up to refresh the timeline will return in chronological order. It’s not a perfect solution, but it at least combines both methods rather than changing the whole system for everyone.
Update: According to the official Twitter post, the early look of The Verge is actually upside-down from the release version. Twitter describes it as follows:
This is how it works. You enable this feature in your settings; then when you open Twitter after some absence, the tweets you are most likely to be interested in will appear at the top of your timeline – still recent and in reverse chronological order. The rest of the tweets will appear right below them, as always, also in reverse chronological order. At any time, just pull to refresh to see all the new tweets on top of a live, accurate to the second, an experience you already know and love.
So if you scroll up or down enough, you will end up returning to reverse chronological tweets. It’s like the “While you were gone” function, only more. It sounds a little confusing at first, but it doesn’t sound like a radical change that people were worried about – so far it’s clear that this is a module, and not just part of your timeline, as the representatives of Twitter did. evasive about the statement.
For those who love Twitter the way it is, don’t panic. At least initially, this change will be allowed. You need to go to your app’s settings to enable it. Eventually, this feature will be disabled, but it won’t happen until after a few weeks, and who knows? Twitter may change its mind sooner.
For now, the new timeline will only apply to Twitter apps for Android, iOS, and the web. TweetDeck and Twitter for Mac (both of which are more commonly used by power users) will retain their regular timeline. At least for now.
Never miss important tweets from people you follow | Twitter via The Verge