Twitter is bringing back chronological timelines

Tom Bedford September 18, 2018

Twitter will soon let you see tweets in the order they were tweeted, just like the good old days.

Twitter is bringing back chronological timelines

Over ten years ago Twitter used to organise tweets chronologically. In 2016 this all changed due to the introduction of a complex algorithm that altered everything about how Twitter’s timeline was organised. This change wasn’t without complaints, becoming subject to the #RIPTwitter hashtag. But now, nearly three years later, Twitter is offering to wind back the clocks.

In a series of tweets on Tuesday morning, Twitter Support announced its decision to re-introduce the ability to see tweets in the order they were tweeted – a direct response to criticisms of its current system.

Twitter Support defended the current system, saying it makes “Twitter more relevant and useful,” yet it pledged to work on a way to switch between the current system and a “timeline of the latest tweets”. This switching feature is to be tested in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, Twitter has updated the “Show the best tweets first” setting to only show tweets from people you follow, as opposed to recommended tweets and older, popular tweets as before.

Twitter timelines can often be chaotic, with recent tweets, promoted tweets, archaic retweets, “Who to follow” sections and other features all swirling about in an anarchic fashion. This introduction of a feature to organise the disarray is a promising way to make the social media platform more appealing for those that like to stay up to date.