Is Twitter Launching An Algorithmic News Feed Feature? ‘While You Were Away’ Spotted In The Wild

The beauty of Twitter has been in the simplicity of the service. A user Tweets and that message appears in a follower’s feed, uninterrupted. This however may be changing.

A new “While you were away…” feature has begun showing up for many users that is compiling top Tweets that have occurred since a user had last signed in. This would allow for Tweets to have a longer shelf life and have the ability to gain more traction. Currently Twitter has an alert system that will notify users of important Tweets, but this new system would be a set location where the best of the best unseen Tweets would reside.

“While you were away”? Come on Twitter…ain’t nobody got anything that important to say pic.twitter.com/a8zkDUJEDY

— Swaggy D (@wakaflockaLEN) December 4, 2014

This feature would likely be a major draw to the non-avid twitter user. Instead of having to scroll through a timeline of every single Tweet, they’d be able to glean the best content instantly. This would also be a boon for marketers like Arby’s that invest heavily in shareable content as the messaging will live longer than a fleeting Tweet in a timeline. There has not been an official comment about this feature or an upcoming launch yet.

Image courtesy of Chandra Salim Putra.