Twitter has introduced a new algorithmic timeline option that allows users to modify their timelines to highlight tweets, with the tweets that Twitter thinks you’ll want to see the most showing up first.
“You follow hundreds of people on Twitter—maybe thousands—and when you open Twitter, it can feel like you’ve missed some of their most important Tweets,” wrote senior engineering manager Mike Jahr in a blog post for Twitter. “Today, we’re excited to share a new timeline feature that helps you catch up on the best Tweets from people you follow.”
Last week, BuzzFeed reported on the change, and Twitter users had kind of a meltdown once they learned that the site would be introducing a more Facebook-style timeline, ditching the traditional display of tweets in reverse chronological order. Not surprisingly, this revelation resulted in the formation of a hashtag: #RIPTwitter.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made sure to calm everyone’s nerves by clarifying that the change won’t be nearly as drastic as people think it will be, and it certainly doesn’t mean that traditional timeline is gone for good.
Twitter is live. Twitter is real-time. Twitter is about who & what you follow. And Twitter is here to stay! By becoming more Twitter-y.
— Jack (@jack) February 6, 2016
This change may come as a reaction to the recent halt in Twitter’s user growth. On Wednesday, the site revealed that its number of monthly visitors in the fourth quarter totaled the exact same amount of monthly visitors reported in the previous quarter—320 million. The algorithm was probably introduced as part of a plan to attract new users and to increase engagement.
One way to think about this is by thinking about it as a more amplified version of the “While you were away” feature that was introduced last year. But, whether you’re for or against the change, the good news is that it’s completely optional and you can turn it off if you’re not too fond of it.
“Here’s how it works,” Jahr writes. “You flip on the feature in your settings; then when you open Twitter after being away for a while, the Tweets you’re mostly likely to care about will appear at the top of your timeline—still recent and in reverse chronological order. The rest of the Tweets will be displayed right underneath, also in reverse chronological order, as always.”