It’s often said that trying to consume information from the web is akin to drinking from a firehose. The sheer volume of information coming at you can overwhelm even the most diligent of personalities.
Nowhere is this more so than on Twitter. There are believed to be 500 million tweets sent every day. The volume has rendered the normal interface all but useless, with smarter users turning to things like lists and hashtags to filter their feed accordingly.
Even that can be rather overwhelming however. Twitter is stepping into the breach to try and help curate some of the highlights from your network.
This will consist of a twice daily summary of the best tweets from your connections.
“We want to help you get the most out of Twitter, no matter how much time you spend with it. While your home timeline is a great place to browse through and engage with tweets, we know it can be challenging to find the time to get through everything,” Twitter say.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that Twitter have attempted to provide a form of curation for us, with this latest attempt amidst accusations from investors that its growth is less than ideal.
“We look at things like the accounts and conversations that are popular among people you follow, tweets from people you’re closely tied to, topics and events that are trending in your area or within your network, and people that are popular or trending among people you follow,” they say.
Whether that pulls the best content or merely the most popular, only time will tell. I think the service is very much needed to help people make sense of the vast amount of content they receive each day.
The success however, as with most things, will depend on how it’s implemented. If you want to try it out, it’s been rolled out initially on Android devices, and you can switch it on in the user settings part of your account.
I'll believe this when I see it. Twitter have tried this kind of thing before and it was usually a poor service.
I think this could be a great idea if it's done well. The proof will be in the pudding I guess.