Twitter is getting a Facebook-style news feed
‘While you were away’ feature highlights tweets that might have been missed
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Twitter is rolling out a new feature that will collect tweets in a Facebook-style news feed.
The “While you were away” feature pulls together posts that you might have missed, and is being gradually rolled out to users.
Like the Facebook news feed, the feature seems to choose tweets based on how much interaction they receive and whether an algorithm thinks users will be interested in them.
Some users appear to have got access to the feature in early December, but the number of posts about it seem to indicate that it has been rolled out more quickly in recent weeks.
Twitter announced the feature in November, saying then that it was “experimenting with ways to give you what you come to Twitter for: a snapshot of what’s happening”. It said that the feature would use information like who you follow and what you engage with to pick out highlights, showing them “as you log back in or come back to the app”.
When it announced the feature, following a shareholder conference, it also said that it was working on other ideas including an instant timeline for users that don’t want to work on of their own.
Both features are likely to be an attempt to challenge the dominance of Facebook, which continues to boast many more users than Twitter. The non-stop nature of the Twitter home page and the work it takes to create a news feed when users sign up have both been cited as reasons that Facebook continues to pull in more users.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments