Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has assured people that Twitter will not be radically changing the way it displays users’ tweets.
There was outrage on the social media platform yesterday after a report by BuzzFeed said Twitter was planning to abandon the reverse chronological order of its timeline in favour of one organized by an algorithm.
Twitter users quickly vented their frustration about the possible changes. Many believed that the changes would result in the death of the microblogging platform, with the hashtag #RIPtwitter becoming the top trending U.S. item on Saturday.
However, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey quickly responded to the rumour, putting the claims rest.
He said that Twitter will not be adopting a Facebook-style timeline. “We never planned to reorder timelines next week”, Dorsey tweeted.
“Twitter is live. Twitter is real-time. We love the live stream. It’s us. And we’re going to continue to refine it to make Twitter feel more, not less, live!”, the CEO went on to say.
I *love* real-time. We love the live stream. It’s us. And we’re going to continue to refine it to make Twitter feel more, not less, live!
— Jack (@jack) February 6, 2016
What’s really up Twitter’s sleeve?
Twitter does have a few changes in the pipeline though, according to The Verge.
The social media giant is believed to be working on an expansion to its “while you were away” feature, which could re-order users’ timeline, but only in ‘a minimal way’.
Casey Newton, Silicon Valley editor at The Verge, provided a brief explanation on how the update will affect users:
“Spend an entire day away from Twitter, and when you open the app again, you’ll see highlights from the day. If you open it up a few times a day, you’ll see a handful of “while you were away”-style sections breaking up the chronological tweets. And whenever you pull down to refresh your stream, it’s back to the regular, reverse-chronological timeline.”
What’s more, The Verge confirmed users will be allowed to opt out of the new timeline.