Looks like Twitter is growing up. It’s no longer the young up-start, nor the adolescent trying to find itself and earn a living. It’s now the adult businessman out to make money and show the world his full potential. At least that’s what some of the changes that Twitter is announcing today are leading us to believe.
The social network made its plans for the near future public and it looks like some major changes are coming soon. First up Twitter announced it would start supporting native videos, not just Vines, meaning you’ll soon be able to share a whole lot more than 140 characters.
But the big change announced today goes straight to the core of what Twitter is. The social network is changing the way it operates and displays tweets. Until now users simply got a stream of unfiltered, chronologically ordered tweets and it was up to them to decide what’s important and what’s not.
But starting next year Twitter will do some of that filtering for us, supposedly only displaying a snapshot of the total number of tweets we’d see. In other words Twitter is becoming Facebook. And there’s nothing wrong with that and may even help attract new users. As long as those users have a choice: see all messages as per the old system or just the most important ones as per the new one.
This filtering engine will show itself when tweets from users you don't follow will start to show up in your timeline. Those tweets are chosen based on who you follow, your interests, and so on. It will also be used to offer new users a pre-defined stream in case they’re not in mood to build their own: a sort of “ What to Watch” for your stream.
Finally Direct Messages will become easier to use with users being able to take a public conversation private. This will also be the first feature to roll out. Starting next week users will be able to share and link tweets natively inside of DMs.
So what do you think? Is Twitter doing the right things for its business or will veteran users find all of these changes as unacceptable? If you’re a Twitter user let us know in the comments below.
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