[UPDATE] Twitter has confirmed they have started experimenting with Topics that which is similar to following an account, except that instead of seeing Tweets from an account, people see Tweets about a topic.
On last night event with journalists, Twitter announced it will start letting users follow topics based on their interests. The tweets about the chosen topics will appear on their timelines.
Topics could range from television shows, celebrities and sports teams so they’ll be no need to follow specific accounts to have their tweets displayed on your timeline.
https://twitter.com/TwitterIR/status/1187327159150399493
How it will work
Twitter will curate the topics using machine learning rather than editorial curation to identify the individual tweets to insert in the users’ timeline. Rob Bishop, Product Manager at Twitter said that they’re testing this new feature on its Android app with sports-related interests but this raises new or rather the same concerns of having a filter bubble.
https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1161399377459421184
Twitter’s argument for machine learning is that human curation would be too slow to curate tweets around these topics.
Twitter is starting off with sports topics like Formula 1 and the MMMA.
https://twitter.com/pardesoteric/status/1161386443614248960
According to Twitter’s product lead, the company isn’t planning to create topics for every user’s interest and that some topics would be excluded fearing that this feature could be abused and lead to amplification of really bad stuff.
https://twitter.com/RMac18/status/1161409213685387264
However, not everyone is sceptical. Other people think that this new feature would help improve the user experience for onboarding new users.
Twitter is currently creating a whitelist of approved topics from where tweets will be curated.
Worth noting is that you’ll also be able to mute topics in your main timeline but create a secondary timeline that will have multiple topics, accounts and hashtags.
https://twitter.com/pardesoteric/status/1161389168015970304
No edit button
Twitter said that users shouldn’t expect the edit button to be launched in the near future as it is not high on their priority list and I agree – there are more issues that they need to work on.
https://twitter.com/backlon/status/1161419591735578625
“Honestly, it’s a feature that I think we should build at some point, but it’s not anywhere near the top of our priorities. That’s the honest answer,” Kayvon Beykpour, Twitter Product Lead said.
https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1161418363882467328
Twitter also announced how they want to improve its product for international markets and fix the abuse and harassment problems plaguing the platform.
https://twitter.com/pardesoteric/status/1161398016630112257
“It is imperative that we increase the health of the public conversation,” Beykpour said
Vine was really amazing
Kayvon Beykpour added that he was sad that Twitter shut down Vine in early 2017 but cites the state of Twitter at that time was a factor.
Twitter's @kayvz was just asked if he regrets shutting down Vine given the success of TikTok. "I do regret that we shut down Vine," he said, describing the decision as "extremely sad." He said this isn't because of TikTok's success, but just sad they couldn't keep Vine alive
— Kurt Wagner (@KurtWagner8) August 13, 2019
I regret almost cutting my thumb off on my 12th birthday https://t.co/asm8ZEvFCN
— Tyler Adams (@TylerFactal) August 13, 2019
Other features announced include:
- Twitter is working on bringing search feature to DMs
- The ability to now reorder photos in a new tweet after you’ve attached them.
- Support for Apple’s Live Photos
It is still unclear if this feature will be rolled out globally. Anyway, I’m on board with this.
What if Twitter made a “close friends” feature where you could tweet only to a select group of your followers. Imagine the pettiness, it’d be mayhem. They should do it.
— Katie Notopoulos (@katienotopoulos) August 13, 2019
