Selena Larson wrote a piece on Read Write that Twitter is now going to selectively put tweets in your timeline from accounts you don’t follow. Selena points out that this may be being done to make Twitter easier for newcomers as they can see things they might have missed. On the flipside it is sure to piss off a lot of hardcore Twitter users who constantly pay attention to who they follow and unfollow.
From the article:
Your Twitter timeline is no longer reserved for people you follow. A recent addition to Twitter’s “What’s A Twitter Timeline?” page explains to users that people may start to see “popular” or “relevant” links appearing in their timeline, a space originally reserved for tweets and retweets from the people you’ve chosen to follow.
The change, first spotted by The Next Web, is expected—this month Twitter tested two new features that displayed tweets that weren’t explicitly shared in your timeline. Now it appears Twitter is officially rolling out this new timeline structure that includes suggested follows and favorites as retweets from accounts you don’t follow.
Twitter explains how it will decide which tweets to show you in its revised Help Center page:
Additionally, when we identify a Tweet, an account to follow, or other content that’s popular or relevant, we may add it to your timeline. This means you will sometimes see Tweets from accounts you don’t follow. We select each Tweet using a variety of signals, including how popular it is and how people in your network are interacting with it. Our goal is to make your home timeline even more relevant and interesting