Twitter is going to let you see your tweets in chronological order again
- Twitter announced on Monday that it will give users the option to structure their timelines chronologically by opting out of "Show the best Tweets first."
- Reverse chronological order used to be the default format on Twitter's timeline, but it was changed in 2016.
- Twitter cites user feedback as the reason for the change, and it coincides with a viral tweet that suggested a way to game Twitter's "mute words" function to effectively create a chronological timeline.
Twitter has announced that it will once again give users the option to view their timelines in reverse chronological order, allowing them to opt out of its "Show the best Tweets first" format.
Originally Twitter was structured in reverse chronological order, but the company switched to a default algorithmic timeline in 2016, which upped popular tweets and tweets from accounters users regularly interact with.
In a statement on Monday, Twitter said it had heard "feedback" from users who preferred the unfiltered, chronological model.
It said that it is working on creating an easily accessible switch that would allow people to instantly switch between an algorithmic or chronological timeline, but that in the meantime users can deselect the "Show the best Tweets first" setting to achieve this effect.
It coincides with a piece of advice tweeted by game developer Emma Kinema on Sunday. She said people could use "muted words" as a backdoor to structure their timelines chronologically. The tweet went reasonably viral, with over 18,00 retweets and almost 48,000 likes at the time of writing.
Business Insider has contacted Twitter to ask whether Kinema's tweet had any bearing on the timing of Twitter's announcement.
Twitter reported a small quarter-over-quarter decline in monthly active users in the second quarter of 2018, falling from 336 million in Q1 to 335 million in Q2.