Twitter is giving an update to its timeline. The social media platform has reportedly begun testing a new feature that will let users follow a hashtag or topic.
Twitter To Allow Users To Follow Topics
The new feature will insert relevant tweets chosen by machine learning into the user's main timeline. Before the addition of the new feature, users had to click the app's "Explore" tab to view what other people have been saying about a specific topic.
So far, the new feature is only available on Android and is open to sports-related topics. However, the new feature will soon be expanded to include other topics, including fandoms.
For example, fans of BTS would not have to manually type a keyword in the search box to find other fans. They can subscribe to the topic and see tweets from other fans of the popular boy band on their timelines.
Twitter also said that machine learning will pull tweets related to the topic even if it does not mention a certain hashtag. This means that users would not have to search a hashtag one by one to read other people's tweets.
However, to curb the disinformation campaign, the company will curate and whitelist topics that users will be able to follow upon wider rollout.
Users will also be given the option to mute certain topics from appearing on their timelines.
"Just as over the last 13 years you've been able to follow accounts or mute accounts, we want to allow our customers to follow topics and mute topics," said Kayvon Beykpour, the product lead at Twitter, at a press conference on Tuesday, Aug. 13. "You may decide to turn off politics for the day and only look at puppy Twitter."
Twitter also recently began testing a way for users to follow individual tweets and read replies from other people.
Twitter Still Has No Plans To Add Edit Button
At the press conference held at Twitter HQ in San Francisco, Beykpour was also asked about the one feature that users have been requesting for years: the edit button. While he is positive that an edit button will eventually be introduced to the social media platform, he stated that it will not be implemented any time soon.
"Honestly, it's a feature that I think we should build at some point, but it's not anywhere near the top of our priorities," he told the press. "That's the honest answer."
