Twitter Timelines Are Going to Change in a Big Way ⇥ blogs.wsj.com

Yoree Koh, Wall Street Journal:

This is related to Twitter’s larger aim to better organize its content—to separate the interesting and timely tweets from the noise. Twitter has already begun tweaking the timeline where tweets appear—most notably (and controversially), by introducing tweets from accounts users haven’t chosen to follow.

Twitter’s timeline is organized in reverse chronological order, a delivery system that has not changed since the product was created eight years ago and one that some early adopters consider sacred to the core Twitter experience. But this “isn’t the most relevant experience for a user,” Noto said. Timely tweets can get buried at the bottom of the feed if the user doesn’t have the app open, for example. “Putting that content in front of the person at that moment in time is a way to organize that content better.”

Twitter has always had a bit of a shaky business model, especially if you look at the way it was used in about 2008 or 2009. I understand that these changes will allow users to Engage with Brands™ and therefore drive Twitter’s revenue, but this is ultimately a really shitty move for users. A Twitter timeline is a user’s rolling guide to the day, as viewed through the scope of their interests and time. That much is absolutely central to the Twitter experience, and should be sacrosanct for the company. It’s too bad that they don’t see it that way.