Twitter simplifies timelines by making replies optional viewing

20 Jun 2012

Twitter is rolling out changes to how it displays tweets on the profiles of verified accounts, giving users the option of seeing the full disclosure of a person’s tweets and conversations, or to filter out replies and make the timeline more streamlined.

Announced on the official Twitter blog, the new changes account for the fact that some followers may want to view a person’s tweets and not necessarily the back-and-forth they have with others. Rather than take away this option, Twitter is letting users have their cake and eat it, too, by providing both options.

Now, when you visit verified accounts, the default setting will be ‘No replies’, bringing you a timeline of tweets without replies (ie, tweets that start with usernames). To see all of the tweets from an account, users can simply click ‘All’ at the top of the timeline.

Steve Martin tweets

It’s a nice idea that makes first views of a profile less cluttered, giving you just the meat of the tweets and less of the chatter. This will be rolled out to all verified accounts over the coming weeks, but it has not been mentioned whether the option will be added to regular Twitter profiles.

Elaine Burke is the host of For Tech’s Sake, a co-production from Silicon Republic and The HeadStuff Podcast Network. She was previously the editor of Silicon Republic.

editorial@siliconrepublic.com