Time Is (Soon To Be) Irrelevant

Twitter has recently announced that they are leaning towards changing their interface to an algorithm-based timeline rather than the traditional reverse chronology. Facebook fans are familiar with this setup; the dashboard is set up in such a way that posts are displayed in order of relevance based on an algorithm. Twitter, on the other hand, is set up so that users read status updates as they are posted, starting at the bottom and scrolling up for the most recent posts.

Twitter has been making several changes as of late, including changing "favorites" to "likes," displaying popular posts whether or not the user is following that person and allowing longer direct messages. However, these changes have met a variety of reactions, few of which are positive. 

One of the milder reactions to recent changes...

Personally, I am not a fan of the algorithm option. On Facebook, I find it confusing and, frankly, annoying. I have always been a fan of the way that I could follow an event as it was happening on Twitter and the idea of that changing is quite upsetting. To me, it seems like Twitter is sacrificing efficiency for the sake of boasting that it is "high tech" or "innovative" with relatively no input from their users. I am sure that, if Twitter had reached out and asked whether or not users prefered the chronology versus an algorithmic interface, fans would have preferred them to stick to what they already had.

At the end of the day, if something is not broken, there is no reason to fix it.

Until next time!

Kathryn

For more information: The Verge Buzzfeed Heavy