A new year under new management, Twitter is starting things off by introducing another way to improve Tweet discovery. Twitter is testing out a new topics bar that’ll sit above the main Tweet timeline, providing users with a quick link to real-time discussions within the app. While it might sound like a much-needed feature that came in a little late, the improved utility in terms of both convenience and relevance allows Twitter to have a strong start.
Things Get Topic-al
User Chloe Korzh shared an example of the new topic listings, which were subsequently shared by the man, the myth, the legend – Matt Navarra. Barely 5 days into the new year, and Matt’s already at it again; that’ll definitely increase awareness about the update, which hopefully turns out well as the year progresses. Based on the screenshots, the new listings will appear as bubble tabs above your main feed, providing users with an easy way to tap through and connect with the latest threads and discussions.
The said topics would presumably be linked back to your Tweet activity, ideally getting more people involved in expanded discussions within the app, helping Twitter maximize engagement. Besides allotting time for the development of Twitter Spaces and its Blue subscription offer, maximal Tweet engagement has always been a key focus and has been so for the last couple of years. Twitter is said to also be adding in topics that you follow, on top of individual users and inserting curated, topical Tweets into your main feed. Its introduction of communities is also meant to facilitate more topic-based discussions.
Perhaps one of the biggest challenges with Twitter is content discovery; the difficulty of finding new content, in relation to existing interests, is the main reason why new users don’t stay for long. Introducing an algorithmic timeline has helped improve user engagement, highlighting the most interesting and engaging Tweets in-feed. ‘Topics’ is seen as the logical expansion of this, providing more Tweets around your key areas of interest, promoting more exploration, thus leading to more engagement. Twitter seems to finally be getting the concept of ‘rabbit hole feeds’.
The Wrap
Overall, it’s a rather minor addition. We’re not saying it’s insignificant – farm from it actually – more that it’s a small first step in what hopefully transforms into a series of big leaps for Twitter this year. As noted earlier, content discovery is one of the persistent challenges that Twitter has yet to fully resolve, which means that if this small initiative succeeds, then it might equate to Twitter finally being able to overcome a massive hurdle.
As it stands, highly specific content matching isn’t really one of Twitter’s fortes, though Topics stand to substantially improve Tweet discovery and align users with potentially relevant interests, it still has a ways to go before it becomes a platform comparable to the likes of Facebook and Tiktok, at least when it comes to optimal engagement. Even Spaces, its leading audio platform, still has varied chats within its dedicated tab. Fortunately, Twitter has another 300+ days to work on the things it needs to work on. This first step will be the most important.
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