Twitter starts testing “while you were away” Facebook-newsfeed style feature
Twitter has started testing a new feature which will sort through your tweets since the last time you checked Twitter, and display the most important/relevant ones, without you having to scroll through the whole lot.
The news comes via many Twitter users, who have started seeing the section appearing in their app.
OMG, it appears Twitter is testing a Facebook-like algorithm for the Home stream called "While you were away…" pic.twitter.com/CpQQMLp0VO
— Eli (@EliLanger) December 31, 2014
The way it works is similar to the Facebook newsfeed – which doesn’t show you everything, but algorithmically selects the posts that it believes will be most relevant to you. In Twitter’s case, this will presumably be based on a number of factors, such as number of retweets, favourites and who is mentioned in each tweet.
The move could prove controversial though. A feature like this has been rumoured for months and has been making existing Twitter users nervous that the company could break the traditional way that Twitter works – in which users curate their own streams rather than have Twitter’s algorithms do it for them.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments!
