Here Comes the Algorithmic Timeline ⇥ blogs.wsj.com

Speaking of Twitter, they’ve decided to expand the “while you were away” algorithmic feature introduced last year. Yoree Koh, Wall Street Journal:

Twitter Inc. is under intense pressure to figure out how to get more people to use the service. But on Wednesday it is releasing a change that is aimed at charming its most ardent fans.

Twitter said it is inserting more tweets at the top of the timeline that a user missed while they were away from the service. Since last January, Twitter has included five tweets as part of a feature called “while you were away.”

Now, Twitter says it will separately include a host of “best” tweets at the top of the timeline each time a person reopens the app or website, displayed in reverse chronological order.

I disagree with Koh’s assessment that this is meant for the biggest Twitter fans, many of which use third-party clients instead. This seems to be more for casual users who check Twitter occasionally, rather than having an app always open. It’s a good move for that group; most of those users probably follow a bunch of public figures and don’t have time to sift through their timeline chronologically. As long as a real-time option and third-party clients are still available for junkies like me, I think this move is fine.