If you’ve recently logged into Twitter and noticed that your news feed looks a little different, brace yourself – this is just the beginning. Last Wednesday, Twitter began rolling out sliding newsfeeds, allowing users to switch between the For You and Following tabs. This change is part of a larger user interface overhaul.
The update will be available on iOS first, replacing the old Home and Recents tabs. With this update, users can enjoy the feed defined by the Twitter algorithm while having access to a chronological feed of the accounts they follow.
The benefit of scrolling through the algorithm-generated feed is that you are shown content that is presumed to be of interest to you, based on the content and topics you follow and your previous Twitter activity – similar like TikTok’s “For You” page.
Recommendations can sometimes miss the mark
However, despite the best efforts of the algorithm, recommendations can sometimes miss the mark. That’s why Twitter is introducing the “Following” tab in the app, giving you one place to only see content from accounts you follow.
Elon Musk tweeted about this update last week, along with other updates coming soon to the app as part of a “much bigger UI overhaul.” The next update you can expect is a bookmark button.
Currently, the only way to gather the content you like in one place is to like a Tweet. The problem is that anyone can see the content you like, which limits the number of posts you like. Elon Musk calls the bookmark button “Silent Like” because it allows users to privately mark posts they want to revisit later, similar to the bookmarking feature on Instagram and TikTok.
Longer tweets
The latest update, which Elon Musk warned us about, affects long-form tweets that could reach the app as early as February. Currently, Twitter has a 280 character limit, which is double the number of characters originally allowed when the app launched. In December, Musk confirmed that the new limit would be 4,000 characters.
Source: “ZDNet.com”