If you sign in to Twitter a few weeks from now, things could be radically different than they are at the moment.
Users
are likely to see promoted tweets or ads on their timeline, since
Twitter has now changed the definition of what a Timeline is.
The
company says it will pull up tweets that it finds relevant to your
timeline and tweets that are generating the most amount of interest to
the fore with the new update. However, Twitter won’t display all the
tweets your followers favourite or follow. It will choose relevant posts
depending on who you follow and the kind of posts that interest you.
Even so, that’s a major change to deal with for most users, who would
have become comfortable with their list. What does this change mean to
Twitter users and how will it change the way they have been using it?
Here’s what a few from our team have to say:
Alina Lewis
Apart
from the fact that my timeline looks a lot more cluttered now, it does
not really bother me that Twitter shows ads and tweets from people I
don’t follow. Yes, it makes it harder to sift out posts I’ve willingly
subscribed to, but that’s the fate most social networks eventually meet
in order to survive.
It’s
not surprising where it’s got its inspiration from. Facebook has been
doing the same with its News Feed – suggesting common friends you may
know and bombarding you with posts and pages that your friends like.
However, it would be nice if users were given an option to choose what
and whose posts they wish to see.
Nimish Sawant
I
was horrified on reading the news about Twitter experimenting with this
feature earlier this week. I do follow a lot of active users and I’m
sure a lot of them favourite a lot of posts on a daily basis. Surely, I
would have to unfollow a lot of people had Twitter gone ahead with
showing me posts people had favourited.
But
Twitter deciding to show me posts from people I don’t follow, will not
really affect my usage pattern. As it is we are bombarded with Promoted
Tweets, which may be completely irrelevant to us. Showing us tweets
(from accounts we don’t follow) which revolve around our Twitter usage
and our network’s engagement pattern, was going to happen one day. In
fact, I see it in a positive light as compared to Promoted Tweets.
We
are seeing a similar type of customised content delivery on other
social networks such as Facebook and more recently, on Instagram as well
(which shows you Popular pictures based on people you follow). With
large social networks, which have no immediate alternative, such moves
will be the norm. You can either embrace it or sulk about it, but such
changes will be a reality going forward. One just has to look at the
Facebook NewsFeed for reference. I just hope there isn’t an overflow of
such tweets on the timeline.
Nikhil Subramaniam
Twitter
was the last major social network to leave control of the UI with the
users. You could choose to follow only a handful or millions. You could
mute or block retweets from users. Even the promoted tweets could be
easily avoided with a scroll of the mouse wheel. It was about bringing
tweets to you from people (or bots) that you wanted. All that’s changed
now with the new definition of Timeline, which is supposedly about
increasing relevance of my timeline. That’s just euphemism for ‘moar ad
revenue’. With the new timeline, I will once again be shown crass and
inane tweets (mostly from brands in all likelihood) because others are
retweeting or replying to it. Hey, Twitter, I spent all of 2011
unfollowing these ‘popular’ accounts.
Now
Twitter will be less human; now it will be about algorithms deciding
what’s generating most interest; it will be about keeping you clued-in
to the trending topics, even if you find them inane and are not
remotely interested. Now you will have to tolerate tweets from people
you actually dislike, just because they have enough of a following, and
are generating interest. Twitter made it possible to circumvent these
annoyances, by giving you full control. It’s an altogether different
beast now.
Lately,
I had stopped tweeting as much, using Twitter as simply a
news-gathering tool or just to see what’s the general opinion on a
controversial news topic. It had gone from a personal exercise to a
professional one, and now, sadly that’s about all I will ever use it
for.
Posted by : Gizmeon
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