Twitter to Allow Users to Follow Interests on the Timeline

Twitter is getting a brand new feature that will allow you to follow interests on the platform. The company announced last night that it’s testing a new system where users will be able to follow certain interests or topics, so tweets about that topic show up directly on your timeline.

Twitter says you will be able to follow things like “Travis Scott” or “Apple” to see tweets about those topics directly on the homepage. That’s obviously a huge deal because that means anyone can show up on your timeline — but Twitter says these new topic tweets will be curated by Twitter themselves, so you won’t see any low-quality tweets on your timeline.

The test has started on Twitter for Android, for now.

Twitter is also testing a number of other new features: the ability to search for DMs, the ability to re-order photos after attaching them (finally!), and support for Apple’s Live Photos on iOS.

The ability to follow interests on Twitter actually sounds useful. Instagram has done something similar in the past, allowing users to follow hashtags. And Twitter’s implementation is similar but could work much better because it’s curated by Twitter themselves. Twitter already tries to detect your most favourite interests and show tweets about that within the Explore tab — and these curated sections are actually really impressive, so if this new feature is anything similar, I won’t be complaining.