The service isn’t revealing the specific formula, but says it will be based on factors such as accounts you interact with most and specific tweets you engage with.
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That is a departure from the traditional presentation of Twitter‘s timeline, which has always shown tweets in reverse chronological order so the most recent messages appear at the top of a user’s feed.
Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO said its new timeline feature has shown “real promising growth” in user engagement. The feature is now available to general users on an opt-in basis.
Twitter said in a filing it had 320 million average monthly active users in the quarter, unchanged from the third quarter and lagging a forecast for 323 million users from RBC Capital Markets. The new top tweets section is targeted at people who aren’t away from Twitter that long, but may follow hundreds or thousands of people and might not see tweets they may find relevant. As a content creator, it means your followers are more likely to see and engage with your best tweets. The revised presentation is a spin-off of a feature called “while you were away” that Twitter introduced about a year ago. The changes are thought to be part of Twitter’s plan to get more people on board, as it struggles to bring on and retain users.
Twitter made a dramatic product change earlier Wednesday, saying it will change the way it displays tweets on its home page – customizing them to individual users. “We’re going to improve the timeline to make sure you see the best tweets, while preserving the timeliness we are known for”.
For years, we’re familiar with the vertical timeline that shows reverse-chronology of tweets.
Twitter claims First View will be the “most valuable advertising real estate”, as it will allow marketers to share their brand story in an “engaging and highly visible way”. Over the next couple of days, Twitter will prompt you to enable the option.
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In testing the new timeline, Twitter wrote in a blog post that it saw increased user interaction with ads and tweets about live events.
