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Twitter is to give users the ability to filter out boring and inane tweets from the people they follow.
The social network said it is introducing a feature placing “the tweets you’re most likely to care about” at the top of the timeline when users log in.
In a post on the company’s blog, Mike Jahr, its senior engineering manager, said: “You follow hundreds of people on Twitter – maybe thousands – and when you open Twitter, it can feel like you’ve missed some of their most important tweets.
Starting today you can choose to try our new feature, so you'll never miss important Tweets from people you follow: https://t.co/fS1axkDiUh
— Twitter (@twitter) February 10, 2016
“Today, we’re excited to share a new timeline feature that helps you catch up on the best tweets from people you follow.
“We’ve already seen that people who use this new feature tend to retweet and tweet more, creating more live commentary and conversations, which is great for everyone.”
The rest of the timeline will appear below in the usual way and the feature can be removed simply by refreshing the feed, he added.
At the moment the feature has to be turned on by users in their “settings”, he added, but Twitter plans to introduce it to all users in the coming weeks. And if people don’t like it they can turn it off.
Last week rumours circulated that Twitter posts may no longer be displayed in time order, with reports claiming the reverse chronological feature – which sees the newest tweet displayed on top of older posts – was to be replaced with a setting favouring more popular or relevant posts.
The rumours did not go down well with users of the 140-character micro-blogging site, as #RIPTwitter became a top trend for most of the day.
