Twitter Updates to Allow Users to Switch Their Feed to Display Chronologically

Twitter’s finally making a great decision and returning the chronological order opt-in to users’ timelines. We’re not biased, but it’s only natural that a more non-curated and clear timeline will add value to users’ experience.

Why Did It Happen

Back in the day, you’d use Twitter for its strong focus on simple and powerful one-liners about different topics including news and commentaries on trends in various industries as well as about politics. However, since 2016 it’s phased out the chronological order of feeds which only led to the content being offered based on relevancy and what an algorithm believes you’ll find interesting and useful. Unfortunately, we were all dealing with content curated by bots and tweets from people you weren’t following showing up based on popularity.

Following a strong movement initiated by Twitter’s users, the platform has now decided to bring back chronology into its game. A strong influence might have been the separate website realtwitter.com, developed by Andy Baio, which ordered tweets chronologically. We’ve factored in the FOMO (fear of missing out) syndrome, so we tested to see if Andy’s website left out any of our feeds. It turned out that it didn’t. But switching back and forth from your Twitter app to this website could get quite frustrating. However, he did make a point about non-curated content and giving users control over what they want to read.

Benefits of Non-Curated Feeds

Users still struggle with FOMO, but we think they’ll soon get over it. Twitter has always been that square where people express their thoughts in a clear and non-cluttered way. They clearly want that same feeling now. The platforms’ users crave for Twitter’s neutral approach to feeds and don’t want to receive tweets based on algorithmic boosts which guarantee that information goes viral depending on number or likes or retweets and on what bots consider as relevant.

How Can You Opt-In for Chronological Order

You can activate the option of viewing tweets chronologically in your timeline by clicking on your Twitter avatar which will activate a slide-out menu showing your Account Profile.

Choose the Settings and Privacy button which will open a separate page in the app including Account information, Privacy and Safety, Notifications, Content Preferences and a General set of options.

Click on the Content preferences button and under Timeline you can switch on/off the Show your best Tweets button. To activate Twitters chronological order on your feeds you should uncheck this option.

Wrapping It Up

Twitter still needs to work on its new ways because even with the option to toggle between the algorithmic distribution of feeds and chronological ordering, we’re still battling against the bot-driven tweets.

It all comes down to how Twitter guarantees users’ control over the content they receive and how they want to view it.

It’s up to Twitter to keep things simple and sweetly ordered if they don’t want another revolution on their hands.

 

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