Just last month, Twitter got a new, Facebook-like algorithmic timeline which took you away from its real-time heart. Fortunately for users who liked Twitter better the way it was before, the company made this new feature strictly opt-in. On Friday though, laying to rest all that negative reporting it has been getting, the microblogging website reported that only a few of its users have chosen not to use the new feature.
For months, Twitter’s growth had become next to stagnant and its stocks were plummeting. Jack Dorsey, the new CEO of the company took over the reigns and introduced many major changes in the way the website worked. One of the more significant changes was the algorithmic timeline that was in testing since Q4 last year and was officially launched by the social behemoth last month.
As soon as reports had started surfacing about Twitter’s deviation from its normal reverse chronological timeline, many ‘hard-core’ tweeters started protesting the change. In fact, we saw their anger in the form of tweets tagged #RIPTwitter.
But they didn’t need to worry that much as the company made sure that everyone would be happy. In case you want your tweets in the old fashioned way, you could just uncheck the box called “Show me the best Tweets first” in the app’s Settings, a section called “Timeline”.
According to Twitter, few users are choosing to opt out of having their tweets sorted for them automatically. No solid figure has been let out yet but the company says that the number is in “low single digits.”
There’s good news, too. According to the company, per user favorites, retweets, replies, and tweets as well as daily usage have seen increase in rates since the launch of the new timeline. No solid numbers here, too.
The company had been discussing the possibility of an algorithmic timeline for a long time. The timeline takes into account many factors like your recent tweets, the people you follow, your likes etc to determine which tweets are most relevant to you and displays them on top of your timeline.
