Twitter is coming up with new ideas to improve the microblogging site, with tests currently underway for letting users follow specific topics so they can easily access content they’re interested in.
It will work exactly how the social site lets users follow specific people (or accounts) – you get to pick from a list of topics that’s been curated by Twitter (using artificial intelligence to populate the list), and then you’ll start seeing tweets from different users on that specific subject in your timeline, along with those from the users you follow.
At present, select Android users are testing the new feature on subjects based around sports, but the topics will be expanded to include TV shows (beware spoilers), celebrities and other popular discussions on the platform.
The topics will be public and if, at any time, you decide you don’t want to be part of the discussion any more (or prefer to steer clear of spoilers), you’ll have the option of unsubscribing, just like how you can already mute certain words or accounts to keep them out of our timeline.
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Twitter is also testing the option of letting users create a secondary timeline for topics they don’t want to see in their central timeline.
When this feature is rolled out across the platform, it will make it a lot easier for users to find content relating to specific interests. As of now, if you’re looking for something related to, say, your favorite TV show, you’ll need to use different hashtags and user-curated content to find what you’re after. This isn’t the most user-friendly way of keeping up with your preferred topics – if you don’t know which specific hashtag to use, you won’t see related tweets.
Twitter is also considering adding other features to its platform, like searchable direct messages, support for Apple’s Live Photos and the ability to reorder images after they’ve been attached to a new post, however they’re still in the pipeline with no clear indication as when they’ll be rolled out.
