Twitter has updated its Android app to include a "While You Were Away" feature, which shows the user the most important tweets that he missed when he was not logged in.
Update! Now rolling out on Android: a recap of top Tweets to help you keep up w/ your world. https://t.co/SxiFDZp7UQ pic.twitter.com/mM55SHW8vP
— Twitter (@twitter) February 24, 2015
The feature was previously only available for Twitter for iOS and the web. It was previewed last year as one of the new features the microblogging network was going to roll out to address the sluggish growth of its user base. The goal is not to retain power users who are already using Twitter every day most of the day but to entice casual users to log in more often.
"While You Were Away," officially dubbed Recaps, is a considerable diversion from one of Twitter's core features, its timeline of real-time tweets displayed in chronological order with the latest tweets at the top.
However, some people can find this wall of tweets they would rather not read daunting and may think it too much to scroll down the entire timeline to see only the most important tweets. Twitter has thus come up with a way to present tweets by showing users a log of what it thinks are the most important tweets based on an algorithm similar to Facebook's, which shuns chronology altogether and assumes it knows best about what the user wants to see in his News Feed.
"A lot can happen while you're on the go," said Twitter product manager Paul Rosania in a blog post. "To fill in some of these gaps, we will surface a few of the best tweets you probably wouldn't have seen otherwise, determined by engagement and other factors."
However, not too many Twitter users are happy seeing Twitter decide what it thinks is important to them. Users who have seen Recaps in action say the feature simply clutters their screen. Besides, if they want to read posts that have been chosen for them by a non-human algorithm, there is always Facebook to turn to.
@twitter This is what ruined @facebook. — Brian Bunton (@brianbunton) February 24, 2015
@twitter Thanks, not updating (android) until there is a way to turn it off ;) — Jeannie (@gkneeisme) February 24, 2015
@twitter More unwanted crap in our feeds. Great job guys. — Tom Eversley (@tomeversley) February 24, 2015
@Ebonafied @twitter Slowly but surely we're losing control of our own timelines.
— Tom Eversley (@tomeversley) February 24, 2015
@twitter I want my feed, reverse chronological. That's all I want. — McNutcase (@McNutcase) February 24, 2015
However, Recaps is not for people who are already on Twitter but for those who log in only every several weeks or so. The microblogging network is currently launching a growth campaign where it is trying to increase engagement and encourage people who only occasionally use Twitter to stay on the platform more often. By offering Recaps, Twitter hopes Android users will stay a little longer instead of logging out prematurely because they cannot stand the barrage of useless tweets.
Twitter's stock has been suffering from investor concerns that the company is unable to replicate the once robust growth of its user base. Twitter says it currently has 288 million monthly active users, a far cry from 1.3 billion users Facebook has.
