Twitter could get topic-based timelines, says Dick Costolo

Twitter is considering the idea of allowing users to tune in to specific topics rather than simply following other users, according to CEO Dick Costolo. The idea was put to the Twitter boss in an email by Yousaf Sekander, a director at UK-based internet marketing firm RocketMill.

Sekander wasn’t expecting a reply from Costolo and was surprised to get one today. In the short email, the Twitter CEO says: “What you are talking about is something we have discussed internally for some time and is related to the notion of topic-based timelines as you would expect. There’s a lot to it, but yes, this is an opportunity that we understand and think about!”

Twitter introduced the option to create custom timelines based on topics and hashtags in Tweetdeck last year but the idea suggested by Sekander would go further. He envisions a Twitter where you can tune in to a user’s tweets on a specific topic and avoid their tweets about other things.

Twitter has shown itself to be very open to curating tweets and algorithmically pushing users to follow new accounts with experiments around the World Cup and the @magicrecs account. It even announced last month that it’s starting to drop tweets from accounts you don’t follow into your timeline.

As with any change to Twitter, there’s bound to be many users who’d balk at the introduction of topic-based timelines. Costolo’s email to Sekander is far from confirmation that these specific changes are on the way but it does provide an interesting insight into the thinking going on inside Twitter.

➤ Twitter CEO Dick Costolo says topic-based timeline is an opportunity for Twitter (RocketMill) 

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