NEW YORK — Twitter’s tweaking its timeline to emphasize certain tweets from people you follow, but don’t expect dramatic changes from the chronological feed you’re used to.
The rearrangement will show up only if you enable it. And it might not be that different from what you’re already seeing under the “While you were away” section of your timeline.
Twitter announced the changes Wednesday as it tries to stay relevant in the face of stiff competition from Facebook, Snapchat and other services.
Here are key things to know about what’s changing:
THE MAIN CHANGE — Twitter has been showing tweets from people and organizations you follow in chronological order, with the newest tweets up top. With the change, posts that Twitter deems important will appear on top, even if they are older. What’s underneath will still be presented chronologically.
WHAT’S IMPORTANT? — Twitter defines it as “tweets you are likely to care about most.” The service isn’t revealing the specific formula, but says it will be based on factors such as accounts you interact with most and specific tweets you engage with. It will include only tweets from accounts you follow — not promoted tweets, which companies pay to insert into your feed.
APPEARANCE — These special, top tweets appear on top when you open Twitter’s app or log on to its website. There’s no label at the top or any marker separating these from normal, chronological tweets underneath. But you can tell by the time stamp that they aren’t in real time. When you refresh your feed, you’ll get the chronological tweets back, and these top tweets will move down your timeline and eventually drop off the page.
WHAT ABOUT “WHILE YOU WERE AWAY”? — The “While you were away” feature was created for people who may have spent hours or days away from Twitter. The new top tweets section is targeted at people who aren’t away from Twitter that long, but may follow hundreds or thousands of people and might not see tweets they may find relevant.
