What you need to know
- Twitter has replaced its "Home" and "Latest" feeds on the home screen with a new TikTok-style interface.
- The redesigned home screen now shows the "For you" and "Following" feeds, with the former being the default feed each time you open the app.
- This new feed serves up tweets from accounts you follow in no particular order along with tweets it thinks you may like.
- Twitter is rolling out the new feed to iOS users first.
Twitter arguably made the right decision when it scrapped a tabbed timeline view a few days after launching it early last year, and for good reason. The algorithmic feed made it difficult to find the most recent tweets from accounts you follow by default, but Twitter is going that route again after all, at least on iOS initially.
Elon Musk's Twitter announced today a new tabbed interface for its home screen, where your feed is split into algorithmic and reverse chronological tabs, with the former being the default view. This means that each time you launch the app, you'll be greeted with tweets both from friends and strangers.
See the Tweets you want to see. Starting today on iOS, swipe between tabs to see Tweets recommended “For you” or Tweets from the accounts you’re “Following.”January 11, 2023
The social networking site appears to mimic a signature moniker from rival TikTok. Twitter's new default feed is called "For you," and as you may have guessed, it shows tweets from people you follow alongside tweets that the service thinks are interesting to you. The other feed is known as "Following," which serves up tweets in reverse chronological order. Previously, these were called "Home" and "Latest," respectively.
The former interface allowed you to set the reverse chronological feed as the default view, and it would stick even after closing and relaunching the app. With the latest update, you'll always see the algorithmically-arranged For you tab first every time you open Twitter regardless of your previous preference.
If history is anything to go by, this hasn't gone down well with users who like to see tweets in order by default. The same move was met with backlash last year, forcing Twitter to suspend the tabbed interface indefinitely. Now, that feature has returned with a different name, and it's probably here to stay.
