Twitter’s timeline is set to closely resemble Facebook’s news feed, as the social networking site will soon start to force you into seeing tweets made by people your friends follow, even if you don’t follow them personally.
Facebook is a mess these days. Its once relatively simple news feed, which included little more than status updates and photo uploads from your friends, is now a collection of pages, videos and posts that you likely have no interest in seeing, but have made their way onto your news feed anyway as a result of their popularity. While this is undoubtedly annoying, it ensures that Facebook can keep rolling in the cash by constantly introducing its users to new content, regardless of whether or not they wish to view that content. Now Twitter, which has always been the more streamlined antidote to Mark Zuckerberg’s networking behemoth, is looking to follow suit.
Related: There’s Been a Small Change to Facebook That You Probably Didn’t Notice
According to TechRadar, Twitter user @aleefbaypay noted that a tweet from Buzzfeed’s official account made its way onto his timeline, accompanied by the message that it is an account that one of his friends follows. Essentially, this was Twitter suggesting that he should follow the account himself – but if he wanted to follow Buzzfeed, wouldn’t he be doing that already?
At the time of this writing, Twitter hasn’t made an official announcement regarding the introduction of the new feature, though we should expect an update at some point in the near future. While they could well be simply testing it out, given that it’s a surefire way of extending their reach to users in the vein of Facebook, it can surely only be a matter of time before the much-maligned sponsored tweets are joined by these spam tweets, too.
