Twitter Kills #Discover Tab On Mobile, Moves Trending Topics To Search Page

Continuing to tinker with its content mix and display, Twitter announced today that is beefing up its trending topics feature and eliminating the Discover tab from mobile apps.

Trending topics on mobile will now include a description for each trend to give people more context about topics that are spiking on the social network. In some cases, trend listings will include how many tweets have been sent and whether a topic is trending up or down. The feature will be available in the United States for users whose settings allow for tailored trends.

The new trending area has been placed on the search page in the iOS and Android apps, which are being updated today. Previously, trends appeared on the Discover tab, which has been removed from the apps. For now, the Discover feature remains on the web platform, but it seems clear that Twitter is pushing newer methods of discovery.

Discover, which is intended to show people popular and high-quality tweets, has been part of Twitter’s product since 2011. But recently Twitter has been working on ways to blend such content into users’ main timelines, an effort that makes a separate page for discovery somewhat redundant. (And moving trending topics to the search page fits well with another development reported earlier today: the company’s experiment with a new search experience for the web.)

“We’ve been working to make content easier to find over the last several months in places like your home timeline – with recaps and Tweets from within your network — and through efforts like MagicRecs,” the company wrote in a blog post. “We’ll continue to make improvements like these in the future.”

Twitter, which has been plagued by user growth that has fallen short of investor expectations, is hoping that these moves will entice users to spend more time on its service and come back more often.