While you were away on your Christmas break, Twitter has decided to introduce a new feature called 'while you were away'. Isn't that handy...
The new feature aims to bring some of the big tweets and breaking news that you might have missed while you were off living your life away from your phone or computer.
The tweets that you get shown will be personalised to your tastes using an algorithm, and will attempt to highlight everything that's been going on in your world in your absence.
OMG, it appears Twitter is testing a Facebook-like algorithm for the Home stream called "While you were away..." pic.twitter.com/CpQQMLp0VO
— Eli (@EliLanger) December 31, 2014
First impressions are that it seems fairly similar to Facebook's NewsFeed, which is less immediate than Twitter's stream, and most people have been pretty positive, certainly in comparison to the last new addition which was to put tweets from people that you don't follow in to your feed based on your other activity on the social media network.
My first 'while you were away' tweet comes from @seancallanan.
@JonnoSimpson is obviously tweaking the algorithm :) pic.twitter.com/ycNtCwB8fm
— Tinus le Roux (@tinusleroux) December 10, 2014
If it proves popular, then it may well be used as another important vehicle for advertising as an alternative to promoted tweets.
Via Uproxx