Twitter users angry of plans to prioritise Tweets

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By Larry Banks

The hashtag #RIPTwitter became the top trending Twitter item in the US at the weekend, after a report from BuzzFeed said the company was planning to change the way it displays Tweets.

The BuzzFeed report on Friday didn’t reveal the source of its information, but said the social media service would reorder Tweets to prioritise those that it believes users will want to see. At the moment the service presents the Tweets in chronological order.

The response to the news was overwhelmingly negative, with the hashtag #RIPTwitter suggesting that users of the micro-blogging site would lead to the death of the company.

Users were upset that Tweets from accounts that have fewer followers might be suppressed under the new scheme, while others complained that changes would make Twitter too similar to Facebook, which presently arranges content according to an algorithm which prioritises the order.

“Dear Twitter, don’t try to be like Facebook, we don’t like Facebook #RIPTwitter,” was one of the typical Tweets…

“Clearly the motto ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ is something @twitter isn’t familiar with #RIPTwitter,” tweeted EldestSalvatore (@EldestDamon) on Saturday.

In recent times, Twitter has been under pressure to grow subscriber numbers and it struggles to generate advertising revenues on a scale similar to Facebook.

The firm recently came under fire when it announced plans to allow users to post content up to 10,000 characters long, a huge increase from the previous limit of just 140 characters.

SOURCE: Reuters.

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