Twitter to soon let users follow interests, starting with sports, and create separate timelines for different topics; topics will be curated by Twitter using AI
A new way to explore interests on Twitter — Twitter will begin letting users follow interests, the company said today …
The VergeCasey Newton
Context & Ripple Effects
This announcement lands mid-arc for Twitter's curation push. In 2018 the company started sorting stories into topic-based sections on its Explore tab and building dedicated event pages with personalized news alerts tied to the accounts users already follow — but both were Twitter-initiated surfaces, not something a user could subscribe to.
First-order effects
Users gain the ability to subscribe to an interest — starting with sports — and get a separate timeline for it, shifting Twitter from a purely follow-people model to a follow-things model.
Twitter's own AI curation becomes the gatekeeper: which tweets surface in a topic timeline is decided by the company's models, not by who a user follows.
Second-order effects
Accounts competing for attention in sports conversations now face a second distribution channel they must optimize for — algorithmic topic placement alongside the follower feed — changing how reach works for publishers and athletes alike.
Third-order effects
The follow-through of this line is visible in the corpus: within months Twitter shipped Topics covering 300+ subjects, and by 2021 extended topic structure into moderated public spaces with invite-only Communities — pointing toward an interest-graph platform where machine curation, not the follow graph, is the primary sorting mechanism.
The trend: Twitter is steadily re-sorting itself around AI-curated interest graphs — from Explore tab sections to subscribable topics to moderated communities — layering machine-selected content on top of the follow graph.
A few other things Twitter is working on: -DM search (finally!) Twitter says it is “re-energizing” investment in DMs -Live Photo support (will look like a GIF) -Ability to reorder photos in the app
👋 I'm at @Twitter HQ this afternoon to chat about the future of Twitter—from conversations to the timeline to election integrity. Follow along for updates in real time; I'll do my best to provide analysis, too!
I can't believe it took Twitter 13 years to consider letting users follow topics rather than only allowing them to follow people, brands, and bots. Still, better late than never. https://www.theverge.com/...
yeah! asked this Q at the event and @rob_bishop tells me company is starting with sports to observe how it affects these issues. I'm mildly optimistic would be net positive for pop culture stuff; less so for news topics
Now I think about it, this could just the same tweets and topics from the search/explore tab in your main feed, couldn't it? If so, in time there will be things like ‘Technology Journalists,’ ‘UK politics’ and ‘Technology VC’ to follow (based on what Twitter shows me there). http…
A good move. But I'm curious to see to what extent the algorithms will promote stuff from major accounts as opposed to interesting things from lesser-followed accounts. https://twitter.com/...
Important caveat: Twitter is going to hand-pick the topics, and they say they'll choose “enduring” subjects that are “in line with” the company's policies. So, probably not anti-vaccination campaigners, or Jeffrey Epstein.... https://twitter.com/...
Didn't you just complain (reasonably) about trending topics yesterday? I know Twitter is trying to combat filter bubbles and see topics as part of that, but I'd bet money these solutions create a worse propaganda propagation problem, or worse, “fair and balanced” editorial. 😬
Twitter also apparently planning to hire human editors to curate the trending topics, and then abruptly fire them all a few months later https://twitter.com/...
More context from @kayvz on curated topics users can follow: the company will develop a set of principles on what topics to expose and is currently figuring that out. He says the company is aware of the “superpower” of the feature. Early on it will go off a whitelist of topics.
Finally. I for one am tired of looking a curated timeline full of content from people I've specifically chosen to follow when I could be looking at a timeline full of content from legions of randos. https://twitter.com/...
Amazing it's taken Twitter this long but the ability to follow topics rather than just accounts should make it far more accessible for a broader audience https://www.theverge.com/...
I'm here too and asked Twitter if they've determined topics that it would definitely not offer for following, specifically anti-vax. They didn't really have an answer and said topics had to comply w/ its rules. They're starting the feature w/ sports. https://twitter.com/...