Twitter is testing custom timelines built by developers that merge content around specific themes, starting with one about The Bachelorette in the US and Canada
Twitter is testing a new feature that will show users custom timelines built by developers that will merge Tweets …
Context & Ripple Effects
This test is the latest move in a decade-long cycle of Twitter re-engineering the timeline: the 2015 TV Timelines experiment already tried bundling show conversations with photos and video, and the 2018 test of algorithmically curated timelines for big news events pushed Twitter's own editorial curation to the top of the feed.
What is new here is who does the curating. Instead of building themed feeds in-house, Twitter is opening the surface to developers, starting with The Bachelorette in the US and Canada — a live-TV theme that echoes the old TV Timelines play but hands the tooling to third parties. It lands alongside Twitter's 2021 experiment turning Explore into a TikTok-like feed, part of the same push to make the timeline a product rather than a firehose.
First-order effects
- US and Canadian users get a developer-built timeline that merges tweets around The Bachelorette, and developers gain a sanctioned surface to publish themed feeds on Twitter for the first time in this cycle.
Second-order effects
- TV shows and their fan communities become de facto curators competing for timeline placement, shifting curation labor from Twitter's own Explore and Moments teams to outside builders whose themed feeds Twitter does not have to maintain.
Third-order effects
- If the developer-built model sticks, Twitter's timeline real estate gets allocated by third-party curation rather than in-house editorial — the endpoint of a line running from the 2015 non-chronological tests through algorithmic feeds to outsourced curation.
The trend: Twitter is iterating the timeline from chronological to algorithmic to developer-built, progressively outsourcing curation of its core surface.