Twitter to allow users to rank tweets in chronological order again

Twitter CEO Jack
Dorsey.
AP Photo/Jose Luis
Magana

• Twitter announced on Monday that it will give users the
  option to structure their timelines chronologically by opting
  out of “Show the best Tweets first.”
• Reverse chronological order used to be the default
  format on Twitter’s timeline, but it was changed in
  2016.
• Twitter cites user feedback as the reason for the
  change, and it coincides with a viral tweet that suggested a
  way to game Twitter’s “mute words” function to effectively
  create a chronological timeline.

Twitter has announced that it will once again
give users the option to view their timelines in reverse
chronological order, allowing them to opt out of its “Show
the best Tweets first” format.

Originally Twitter was structured in reverse chronological order,
but the company
switched to a default algorithmic timeline in 2016, which
upped popular tweets and tweets from accounters users regularly
interact with.

In a statement on Monday, Twitter said it had heard “feedback”
from users who preferred the unfiltered, chronological model.

It said that it is working on creating an easily accessible
switch that would allow people to instantly switch between an
algorithmic or chronological timeline, but that in the meantime
users can deselect the “Show the best Tweets first” setting to
achieve this effect.

It coincides with a piece of advice tweeted by game developer
Emma Kinema on Sunday. She said people could use “muted words” as
a backdoor to structure their timelines chronologically. The
tweet went reasonably viral, with over 18,00 retweets and almost
48,000 likes at the time of writing.

Business Insider has contacted Twitter to ask whether Kinema’s
tweet had any bearing on the timing of Twitter’s announcement.

Twitter reported a small
quarter-over-quarter decline in monthly active users in the
second quarter of 2018, falling from 336 million in Q1 to 335
million in Q2.