Twitter redefined its timeline Monday, officially acknowledging that the feature is for more than just those you follow and their retweets.
First, a quick recap. Earlier this month, Twitter started experimenting with what users see on their timeline. That included adding tweets from accounts users don't directly follow and has evolved to incorporate tweets users they follow favorite.
The second experiment, which treats favorites more like retweets, offers a significant change to the ways users interact with the service. As I wrote on Sunday, Twitter favorites have an entirely separate social dynamic and their meaning is much more nuanced and personal to the user.
Unsurprisingly, the user response to the changes is predominately negative. Doing a Twitter search for "Twitter annoying" and "Twitter changes" turned up a number of tweets responding to the change from users of all stripes and follower counts.
EVERYBODY STOP FAVORITING! RT @hltonini Noooooooooooooo!!! RT @TIME: Twitter is making experimental timeline changes http://t.co/DBhQaOXgBz— Jamie Newell (@wowhorse) August 18, 2014
When Twitter makes changes this often happens. pic.twitter.com/wwPhpJWcVH— Cameron Yarde Jnr (@CameronYardeJnr) August 20, 2014
So we don't lose control of the news, we asked Twitter to kill off some of its core features. http://t.co/nGFw8y7H5A— U.S. Dept. of Fear (@FearDept) August 21, 2014
Dear @twitter I do not care what other people favorited and or who they followed. It's just annoying— Dylan James (@DylJames21) August 21, 2014
Why does Twitter display other people's favourited tweets now. Surely that's what a Retweet is for. Getting more like facebook #annoying— Dean (@deanbergkamp) August 21, 2014
Dear Twitter, please put an end to this fav = RT experiment. If we wanted to RT a Tweet, we'd hit that button. Thanks, Your users— Alex Kantrowitz (@Kantrowitz) August 18, 2014
The treatments of favorites is especially controversial amongst users.
Maybe we should start thinking of Twitter favorites as 'lucky retweets'— Martin Bryant (@MartinSFP) August 20, 2014
Wait hold up? So people favorites show up on your TL now too? Nash bruh I'm out, fuck twitter— トニーくん (@_fvcktony) August 21, 2014
Ugh, it was already hard enough to keep up with @twitter without everyone's favorites filling up my TL. #boycottfavorites?— Sveta Stoytcheva (@oksveta) August 21, 2014
Okay but no really @twitter get rid of the favorites thing— #HeelHeichou (@HeichouIRL) August 21, 2014
Dear @twitter, Please change back to the old settings where everyone's favorites don't show up on my TL. No one cares! Sincerely, Everyone— Phil Visser (@visserphil) August 21, 2014
I hate when twitter sends me a notification when someone favorites someone else's tweet like I don't give a fuck twitter— liam russell (@LEE_II_AM) August 21, 2014
I'm officially seeing y'all's favorites being retweeted into my TL now. This is really fucking stupid @twitter— J-Rock (@jammyjam25) August 21, 2014
The negative reaction from users probably won't have an impact on Twitter's decision - unless users respond by using Twitter less as a result of the new timeline features.
It's all about business
Ad Age's Mark Bergan investigated some of the business realities behind the more Facebook-like approach to the Twitter timeline.
Even before going public, Twitter has often followed in the footsteps of Facebook. Not only is Facebook bigger than Twitter (about five times larger), it also leads Twitter in terms of time-spent on the service, advertisements and overall user engagement.
And although Twitter jumped into the mobile ad game earlier than Facebook, it's Facebook that has really succeeded with the transition to mobile, in spite of Twitter's strong mobile legacy going as far back as SMS integration as an original feature.
Twitter's last quarterly earnings may have pleased investors who had grown wary of the company's long-term financial outlook, but the reality is that the company is still fighting to build user engagement.
As this chart shows, in the last year, user engagement -- which Twitter associates with timeline views per monthly active user -- has actually declined year over year.
Normally, this type of decline would be OK, especially if user growth rates exceeded engagement declines.
The problem is that Twitter's monthly active user growth has remained consistent. Twitter is growing, but not as fast as some investors want.
Still, despite declining engagement rates, Twitter's advertising revenue per 1,000 timeline views continues to increase. This metric -- along with others -- becomes a core part of how Twitter can convince advertisers to pay for promoted tweets and other ad units.
And as Ad Age notes, Twitter is also conceivably leaving a lot of money on the table. Facebook's ad coverage is about 5%. That means that for every 20 posts, a user sees an ad. With Twitter, Ad Age puts that ad penetration at less than half of that.
The easiest place to put in more ad units is the timeline. Of course for that to be a good value for advertisers, Twitter needs to show that users willingly spend more time on the timeline.
Thus, we have experiments with showing tweets from other accounts and showcasing favorites like retweets.
Don't expect user threats to change Twitter's mind
All pleas and boycott threats aside, only one action is likely to have a systemic impact on how Twitter treats the timeline: engagement levels.
That is, if after making these changes, Twitter sees Timeline engagement dropping, that's one of the few things that might cause the company to reinstate old behaviors.
Short of that, changes will continue to roll out, whether users like it or not.