The much loved reverse chronological Twitter timeline is back as Twitter attempts to break the ‘filter bubble’

Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey announced on Monday that Twitter’s bringing back the much-loved and original ‘reverse chronological order theme’ for the Twitter news feed. You can enable the reverse chronological theme by making setting changes.

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1042038232647647232

Twitter is also working on providing users with a way to easily toggle between the two different themes i.e. a timeline of tweets most relevant to you and a timeline of all the latest tweets. To change to the reverse chronological order timeline, go to settings on the twitter, then select privacy option, go to the content section and uncheck the box that says “Timeline- show the best tweets first”. Twitter also removed the ‘in case you missed it’ section from the settings.

https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1041838957896450048

The Reverse Chronological theme was Twitter’s original content presentation style, much before it made the ‘top tweets algorithm’ as a default option, back in 2016. When Twitter announced that it was changing its timeline so that it wouldn’t show the tweets in chronological order anymore, a lot of people were unhappy. In fact, people despised the new theme so much that a new hashtag #RIPTwitter was trending back then. Twitter with its new algorithm in 2016 focussed mainly on bringing the top, most happening, tweets to light.

But, a majority of Twitter users felt differently. People enjoyed the simpler reverse-chron Twitter where people could get real-time updates from their close friends, family, celebrities, etc, not the twitter that shows only the most relevant tweets stacked together.

Twitter defended the new approach as it tweeted yesterday that “We’ve learned that when showing the best Tweets first, people find Twitter more relevant and useful. However, we've heard feedback from people who at times prefer to see the most recent Tweets”.

Also, Twitter has been making a lot of changes recently after Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee regarding Twitter’s algorithms and content monitoring. Twitter mentioned that they want people to have more control over their timeline.

https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1042155714205016064

Public reaction to this new change has been largely positive with a lot of people criticizing the company’s Top Tweet timeline.

https://twitter.com/_Case/status/1041841407739260928

https://twitter.com/terryb600/status/1041847173770620929

https://twitter.com/smithant/status/1041884671921930240

https://twitter.com/alliecoyne/status/1041850426159583232

https://twitter.com/fizzixrat/status/1041881429477654528

One common pattern observed is that people brought up Facebook a lot while discussing this new change.

https://twitter.com/_Case/status/1042068118997270528

https://twitter.com/Depoetic/status/1041842498459578369

https://twitter.com/schachin/status/1041925075698503680

Twitter seems to have dodged a bullet by giving back to its users what they truly want.

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The much loved reverse chronological Twitter timeline is back as Twitter attempts to break the ‘filter bubble’

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