Rumors Untrue - Twitter Not Changing To Facebook-Like Newsfeed

Twitter was in a panic last week as rumors circulated that the service was moving towards an algorithm-based feed that would select which tweets you see instead of by the time posted as they are now. The company's president, Jack Dorsey, has now made an official announcement denying the rumor, stating that it's trying to make it "feel more, not less, live."

In Facebook, an algorithm selects the posts that you see in your Newsfeed by how popular they are and how relevant they are to you, which means that you miss around 98% of the things posted by your friends and followers.

With Twitter, you see everything posted by those that you follow, but chances are that you won't want to dig back through a few hours or more of tweets, so usually the ones seen are the most recent.

A change to an algorithm would mean that tweets would be selected for you based upon your preferences and viewing habits, which means that the element of live news would be somewhat replaced. Thankfully, that's not the case as the company says it has no intentions of changing.

This is a big deal if you're using Twitter for promotion in that the Facebook algorithm means that only around 2 to 3% of your friends and followers are seeing your posts, unless you pay to promote them.

This is a good move for Twitter in that its user numbers have flattened at around 300 million, and the last thing that it needed was any controversy that might have caused users to flee to another service.

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UPDATE: It turns out that Twitter introduced the algorithm anyway, but it's not turned on initially. Users can choose to turn it on in their preferences, but this might change over time where it defaults to on and users can choose to turn it off.

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Facebook Tweaks Its Algorithm And Becomes A Useful Tool Again

One of the problems that artists and bands have had with using Facebook for promotion is that the network has made it more and more difficult to reach your fans when you post.

Five years ago you could reach just about all of your friends or followers with a post, but by two years ago that was down to about 15%. Last year it was even worse with the number down to 5% or even less.

Facebook is always tweaking its algorithm however, and has done so again, but this time for the better.

Facebook was getting feedback from users stating that they were worried about missing important updates from their friends, and as a result it will now push those to the top of the News Feed so people are less likely to miss them.

A new update brings three big changes. First, followers can now see multiple posts from the same source. Second, it will promote news from people that Facebook has judged that users care about, and third, it will now show less news regarding friends that liked or commented on a post.

This is all great news for artists and bands that want to promote a new song, video release, or gig. Where recently the best way to do that was to promote the post (meaning you had to pay for it), it appears that you'll now have a much greater reach to the people that care about that information.

Of course, it's still too early to understand just how much the system has been tweaked and what that reach actually is, but stay tuned for more details on how it well it now actually works.

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