Twitter reverses decision to make ‘Home’ feed its default on app

Can’t decide if you want to see tweets listed in real time or served according to an algorithm? You’re not alone—Twitter can’t decide, either.

• Last week, Twitter made it so the default timeline on the app was the Home (algorithmic) feed instead of the Latest feed, per The Verge.
• Users still had the option to view the Latest feed, but, when opening the app, it defaulted to the Home feed “with no option to make the chronological view the default,” per Protocol.

A change of heart: On Monday, after user complaints rolled in, Twitter doubled back, tweeting, “We heard you—some of you always want to see latest Tweets first. We’ve switched the timeline back.”

TL;DR: Users can now once again make their default feeds display the most recent activity first.

Chrono trigger

Social Media Marketing Consultant Kendall Dickieson told Marketing Brew that the classic feed is a good thing for marketers on Twitter, especially when it comes to organic content.

• For brands that comment on other people’s tweets as part of their organic content strategy, she said, defaulting to the Home feed complicates things.
• “They may miss a really big tweet where all the other brands are acting because it just didn’t show up in their feed,” she told us, as the chronological feed allows marketers to “act faster” without missing opportunities to get eyes on their accounts.

For example, Dickieson said a brand might want to respond quickly when a major celeb tweets something funny. “If they are late because they saw it days after, their chance of even being seen shrinks,” she said.—PB