Ignore the premature sounding of the death knell - Twitter won't be messing with your timeline after all.
Earlier today BuzzFeed published a report claiming that Twitter was preparing to switch its chronologically-ordered timeline for an "algorithmic" feed. Company CEO Jack Dorsey has now confirmed that such a shakeup won't be happening.
In a series of tweets, Dorsey said that the company "never planned" to reorder everyone's timelines next week.
"I *love* real-time," he said. "We love the live stream. It's us. And we're going to continue to refine it to make Twitter feel more, not less, live!"
So what's going on?
Since the original BuzzFeed report, NBC News's Director of Branded Content, Josh Sternberg, said sources had told him that the algorithmic timeline would be strictly opt in.
While we can be certain that all the #RIPTwitter hashtags were unnecessary, it wouldn't be a surprise if this is all a mistranslation of some other feature Twitter is working on.
Removing the chronological timeline makes little sense - it's what defines the platform - but it's no secret that Twitter is looking at ways to boost engagement. Last year Twitter CFO Anthony Noto admitted that the service still had some way to reach the "mass market".
The service recently rolled out a new homepage designed to engage people who are not logged into the site. In the last year Twitter has also introduced a 'While You Were Away' feature, which pops tweets you missed to the top of your timeline, and Moments, a new tab that puts a spotlight on the trending stories of the day.
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