As promised by its Chief Twit earlier this month, today, Twitter has published its recommendation algorithm code on GitHub for all to see. It has also posted a new overview of how its Tweet recommendation algorithm works, providing new insights into what dictates the order in which Tweets are displayed.
“On GitHub, you’ll find two new repositories (main repo, ml repo) containing the source code for many parts of Twitter, including our recommendations algorithm, which controls the Tweets you see on the For You timeline. For this release, we aimed for the highest possible degree of transparency, while excluding any code that would compromise user safety and privacy or the ability to protect our platform from bad actors, including undermining our efforts at combating child sexual exploitation and manipulation.”
Git It!
Also important to note here is how Twitter hasn’t included the weighting info connected to each element (i.e. how much emphasis each factor gets in driving the final output results). Let’s take a look at this Tweet from Peter Yang. Based on what Peter has shared, likes and re-Tweets are by far the most significant indicators of interest, which will help boost Tweet reach. Meanwhile, Tweets with only a URL, or those that trigger negative user actions (i.e. blocking, unfollowing, etc.), will limit performance.
Which is pretty much as you’d expect. What’s worth noting here is what gets more traction in the algorithm – a Twitter Blue subscriber’s Tweets get a 2-4x boost. Overall, the release provides high-level insight into how Twitter’s algorithms work, while Twitter’s also provided a more ‘basic’ explanation of the system, to help people better understand how it decides what’ll appear on your timeline.
Ryan Broderick from Garbage Day says:
“Twitter is using invisible subreddits via Topics to algorithmically organize tweets. Because the For You page isn’t chronological anymore, viral tweets can’t be as timely as they used to be. They have to be kind of evergreen. It helps if they’re commenting on something that’s already going viral. And it really helps if you post a thread, reply to yourself, or create some kind of discussion in the replies. There also seems to be a bigger emphasis on video now.”
Wow, you got it, Ryan. Twitter is now looking to promote more Tweets in the ‘For You’ Feed, based on topical engagement, which Twitter defines at the account level by filtering certain accounts into topic categories, then using that as a guide to categorize the likely topic of each of their Tweets. Twitter says that this approach has become a key factor in deciding which ‘out-of-network’ Tweets to insert into your ‘For You’ Feed, or which Tweets to show you from accounts that you don’t follow. Twitter has slowly pushed for more of these recommendations, and how that impacts the Twitter experience is anyone’s guess at this point. However, it will fundamentally transform the ‘For You’ Feed, at least by limiting the pool of source Tweets that Twitter can pull from.
The Wrap
There’s a bit more to it, but no need to get into that can of worms for the sake of context. In any case, this provides some interesting context as to how Twitter looks to rank Tweets and maximize exposure within the main ‘For You’ Feed, which will change on April 15, when Twitter switches to only showing Tweets from paying users in its ‘For You’ recommendations. Twitter hopes that it also helps it improve its algorithms quickly. Maybe it’ll happen? We’ll simply have to wait and see.
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