Slashdot Mirror
Twitter Is Reviving the Chronological Timeline (engadget.com)
In a series of tweets, Twitter announced it will be bringing back the purely chronological timeline in the coming weeks. Currently, the timeline is set up to deliver tweets that people "might have missed" or things supposedly "liked" by people they follow, but some have complained that it misses tweets. Engadget reports: A change that's in place now, is Twitter's "Show the best Tweets first" setting. Starting today, if a user has it turned off it will also eliminate the "In case you missed it" roundups and suggested tweets from people you don't follow. It sounds like exactly the change people have been looking for, and even pursued by setting up filters on their own like the one found at RealTwitter.com.
Not when they're Animal Farm (TM) timelines where some times are more equal than others.
Given that it's twitter, I'd suspect it's influenced by ad impression traction (engagement/clickbaity-ness), paid promotion and politics. If the feed is curated by them, the opportunity to 'fully monetize' the situation or use it for political advocacy without outright appearing to do that is greatly improved - and they can gradually increase it as users get used to it as long as they get traction at first. I wonder if they'll really turn it off, or only split the difference so it's less bad than the current option but leaning the direction they want.