Twitter’s New “Interest” Function Could Be About to Make Your Feed Way Better

People using Twitter will be able to follow a small number of topics like soccer or Apple, in the same way that they subscribe to accounts of people, the social network said Tuesday.

“We’re going to let you follow interests directly,” said Rob Bishop, Product Line Manager, at a meeting with reporters at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco. “This [will] help you find new people to follow.”

For example, sending tweets or interacting about a particular sports team will allow users to follow this team or stay informed about what is being said about it on Twitter.

It will also be possible for these people to hide the themes to, for example, avoid knowing the outcome of a sports match if they planned to watch later.

still in the testing phase

Currently, this new thematic feature is tested on Android devices.

For starters, Twitter has decided to focus on sports-related topics. Subsequently, these topics will be extended to other areas, such as celebrities or TV series. The social network will focus on topics that are not ephemeral, unlike current topics.

“It’s important that we set a rigorous set of principles to define the topics,” said Kayvon Beykpour, product team leader. We take this superpower very seriously.

Other changes to come

Twitter also intends to focus more on online conversation.

“We’re rewriting all the conversation service,”Beykpour. “We are remodeling the infrastructure; it’s almost done.”

Harper Harrison

Harper Harrison is a reporter for The Hear UP. Harper got an internship at the NPR and worked as a reporter and producer. harper has also worked as a reporter for the Medium. Harper covers health and science for The Hear UP.