Twitter adds tweets to timelines in bid to encourage greater use

Twitter is to start adding tweets into people’s timelines from accounts that they do not follow. The social network has been experimenting with the feature since August and now says it will become a standard feature on the service. Trevor O’Brien, from Twitter’s product team, wrote in a blog post: “Choosing who to follow is a great first step - in many cases, the best tweets come from people you already know, or know of. But there are times when you might miss out on tweets we think you’d enjoy. To help you keep up with what’s happening, we’ve been testing ways to include these tweets in your timeline - ones we think you’ll find interesting or entertaining.” He said the new feature was a result of extensive testing on a limited number of Twitter users.

Some timeline experiments never make it to 100% of users. The ones that do aim to make the experience more interesting and relevant. As the timeline evolves, we will continue to show you Tweets you care about when they matter most.

Trevor O’Brien, Twitter production team

"We recently ran experiments that showed different types of content in your timeline: recommended tweets, accounts and topics," he wrote. "Testing indicated that most people enjoy seeing tweets from accounts they may not follow, based on signals such as activity from accounts you do follow, the popularity of the tweets, and how people in your network interact with them. These experiments now inform the timeline you see today." The feature is likely to be aimed at Twitter users who do not actively seek out new people to follow, which is stunting Twitter’s ability to grow. However, some users who have spent time curating a timeline which reflects a broad range of interests from a select group of voices are likely to be unhappy at unapproved tweets appearing in their feed.

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