Twitter has always marketed itself as a platform designed to help users to stay up to date with the news. A 2015 study found that nearly 9 in 10 Twitter users use the platform for news and 74% of those, do so daily. A new update to the platform proves that Twitter still markets itself as such and is striving to make it even easier for their users to stay informed.
New timeline features
BuzzFeed News announced that Twitter has just made a major change to their timeline and now groups together tweets that include the same link, and Twitter confirmed the change. This means, all tweets about a story now feature under the same banner, allowing users to coherently follow the discussion and clearly see different viewpoints on the same story. The story is placed at the top of a new card in your timeline, and the individual tweets that include that link feature below.
Response
Twitter have commented that the change will be coming to all iOS, Android and web users. However, this change could again be met with outrage, as Twitter is echoing other platforms and moving away from a chronological feed.
What are your thoughts on the new update? If you primarily use Twitter as a source of news, do you feel the update will be beneficial?