Twitter users will soon be able to follow topics, not just people
This new Topics feature has already begun to roll out and will be globally accessible on November 13.
Sticks and stones, but words also hurt. Twitter. Picture: iStock
Back in August, Twitter began testing Topics, a feature that lets users follow entire topics instead of just people and accounts; this week The Verge reported that the tool has begun rolling out.
After about three months of testing, Twitter is finally ready to roll out a new feature that would allow users to follow entire topics instead of simply accounts.
According to The Verge, which was involved in the testing of the feature, over 300 subjects spanning sports, entertainment and gaming will be available by the time the feature reaches the entire public next week. If you choose to follow a topic, “you’ll see tweets from accounts that you don’t follow that have credibility on these subjects” based on keywords and audience engagement.
Twitter believes that this feature will make the platform more approachable to new or infrequent users — people who may not know who to follow or simply don’t want to follow an individual’s entire life, just the parts that are relevant to them.
Depending on the success of Topics, the company has plans to keep on adding more categories for its users. In fact, the team is also working on a way to mute topics, so that things like movie endings are not spoiled. The end goal is to have a dedicated list of topics on an explore page so that users can browse through possible categories to follow.
This new Topics feature has already begun to roll out and will be globally accessible on November 13.
For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.
