If you have a twitter account, you may have seen some users tweeting the hashtag #RIPTwitter over the past week. This outrage was due to a Buzzfeed article that reported that Twitter would be switching from a real-time timeline setting to an algorithm timeline. This means that instead of seeing the most recent tweets from the people you follow, you would be seeing tweets that Twitter believes you want to see.
The root of the twitter user’s outrage is that they are claiming twitter will be just like facebook if this change occurs. Facebook currently follows a algorithm timeline system that users have mixed emotions about. Some users feel so strongly about this change to twitter that someone has gone as far as starting a petition to keep Twitter the way it is on change.org. This petition currently has 2,085 signatures in less than a week.
I spoke about the topic with a Stockton University junior, Sierra Palmer, who is an avid twitter user. I asked her what she thought of the proposed algorithm timeline system. She said, “ I don’t’ think I would be interested in using Twitter as much if they changed to this format. I use Twitter because it’s different from Facebook. What’s the point of using it if it’s the same as Facebook?”
Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, went on Twitter to clear up some backlash from this outrage. He claimed that Twitter never planned to reorder the timelines and that, “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.” So, it seems that Twitter users were going crazy over nothing after all!