Twitter Rolls Out New, Swipeable Feed of Only Users That You Follow in the App

As flagged by Twitter chief Elon Musk over the weekend, Twitter has right this moment rolled out its new swipeable timeline choice, which is able to make it simpler for customers to modify between the algorithm-defined predominant feed (which incorporates really helpful tweets from folks you don’t observe), and a chronological feed of simply customers that you just observe within the app.

Which Twitter really already launched in March final 12 months, with an choice to pin a swipeable feed of ‘Newest tweets’ after you tapped on the star icon within the prime proper of the app.

The brand new course of is basically the identical, although Twitter’s renamed the feeds for ‘For You’ and ‘Following’, versus ‘Dwelling and ‘Newest Tweets’.

Surprise the place they bought ‘For you’ from.

Smirking apart, it really could also be a extra priceless choice now than it was final 12 months, as a result of Twitter is now jamming in as many really helpful updates as it could possibly into consumer feeds, in a bid to get folks to discover extra of what the app has to supply, and hold them engaged for longer classes.

Which is basically how TikTok has seen massive success, by exhibiting you a continuing stream of issues that you just would possibly like, versus making you observe any particular profiles essentially. It learns what you’re into, and serves you extra of it, which provides it the benefit of highlighting extra of the perfect content material from throughout the app, and boosting engagement.

The distinction right here is that Twitter’s algorithm is garbage, so you find yourself getting imprecise and tangentially associated tweets, based mostly on what folks you observe have appreciated or adopted, which isn’t a very participating expertise.

So now, if you happen to’re sick of all that, you may simply swipe throughout to eliminate it – whereas making it obtainable by default may additionally get extra folks utilizing the choice, versus having to faucet the celebrities icon and pin the timeline within the earlier iteration.

I might query the transfer from Twitter’s perspective, in that as Twitter works to enhance its algorithm, and lean into the expanded discovery, if folks get used to swiping throughout, it may render these efforts much less efficient, as folks received’t even spend time within the algorithm-defined timeline.

Customers may even, as they did final time, push Twitter to make the ‘Following’ feed the default – which is why Twitter rolled it again, as a result of folks had been irritated that they couldn’t set the non-algo feed as their predominant selection.

However once more, it makes some sense, and will present a greater expertise for lots of customers.

The brand new swipeable feeds choice is now obtainable on iOS. No phrase on Android availability as but.