Twitter Algorithmic Timeline Now Available For All Users

By @TheMarkDalton

Twitter launched its new timeline a month ago, the new timeline sorts tweets in your feed according to relevancy instead of chronology. Initially the service was opt-in and was only available to users who decided to go into settings and turn the feature on for themselves.

However, Twitter’s plan from the start was to turn on the feature for all users by default and it seems that they have quietly done that and the setting is now auto enabled for all Twitter users.

Users have reported seeing the following notification in their feed, I noticed it appear on my timeline last week and users are now reporting that the feature is now opt-out.

The Next Web has also reported that Twitter has updated their FAQ last week to include the fact that the new timeline is now on by default. The new timeline means that you may not see tweets appear as you would have seen them before – live and as they are happening.

Twitter has since confirmed to Mashable that the new timeline is enabled for all users and that it is now an opt-out feature.

So basically if you are really upset about all this and you don’t want Twitter to become like Facebook – which, by the way is a major overstatement – then you can simply head into your Twitter settings and disable it which will take you to the way it was before and calm shall be restored.

I enabled the new timeline when it became available some weeks ago to see if there would be a drastic effect on my feed and to be honest, there is nothing you need to panic about.

I have barely noticed a change at all, it certainly does not turn your timeline into Facebook either. If you wish to turn it off then you can but to be honest the change with the new timeline is so minute that you don’t really need to bother turning it off at all.

Algorithmic timelines seem to be the latest new craze around social media. We know that Facebook has used algorithms for some time now however with Twitter just launching theirs, it seems that Instagram will soon follow suit.

Instagram is currently considering switching to an algorithmic feed instead of a chronological one. Chronological feeds look like they are here to stay and spread across new networks folks, better get used to them.