Steve Dotto here.
How the heck are you doing this fine day?
Me?
I'm feeling fit as a fiddle and ready to twiddle—well, ready to Twitter.
Today on DottoTech, we are going to talk about Twitter’s new algorithm.
Twitter is an all grown-up social network now with their very own algorithm.
Are they going to mess things up?
Let’s have a quick chat about that today on DottoTech.
Now Twitter has been struggling to figure out its identify for some time.
They seem to be this.
They seem to be that.
Recently, they have released an algorithm.
Now what does that mean to you and I?
It means this – it means that Twitter historically has delivered content into our feed completely
unfiltered.
If we follow somebody, we get to see their posts in our newsfeed, in our Twitter feed
and they come in chronologically, just one after the other, a steady stream with absolutely
no filters in place unless we apply filters ourselves.
Twitter has decided that they are doing to now implement an algorithm which has a bunch
of the online world up in arms.
They’re going to become like Facebook, deciding what we can see and what we can’t see.
Of course, the goal of creating an algorithm is ultimately figuring out how to monetize
things better because if they have an algorithm, they can decide what we see and when we see
it.
That means that they can start to charge for us to see what they want, when they want,
when they can make profit.
So there’s a little bit of mistrust happening here.
So far though, it seems fairly benefit.
Here is first of all, as far as we can tell, how this Twitter algorithm is working and
secondly how you enable it because it’s not automatically enabled.
So how it’s working right now as far as we can understand is it has taken the most
popular posts that you may have missed, the ones that create the most engagement from
the people you follow and it populates them to the top of your feed.
As you scroll down, the feed then reverts into the normal chronological full feed.
That’s the way it seems to be working at this point.
No guarantees it’s going to stay that way but that’s what’s happening.
Now how do we manage it?
We turn it on in mobile or in our desktop, both of them by going into our settings.
So let’s jump over.
I’ll quickly show you how to set it up in both mobile and desktop.
If you go into your Settings, underneath your picture, underneath your avatar on the desktop
version of Twitter, you can always find the Settings.
That of course is where we’re going to go to set the settings here.
Here under the Account Settings, if we look down here in Content, it’s under the Timeline.
It says Show me the best tweet first.
If you enable that, then the algorithm will kick in and you will see the most popular
tweets that you’ve missed at the top of your newsfeed.
Setting it up in your mobile phone, almost identical.
You go to Me.
When you’re at Me, which brings up your profile, you can then tap on the gear icon
there.
An extra step here, you go into Settings and it’s not immediately evident in the Settings.
Instead, you have to go into your Account Settings and in your Account Settings, you
find Timeline Personalization where you can also enable the algorithm.
Is it good?
Is it bad?
I have no idea.
I think it’s almost predestined.
Twitter has to figure out a way to make themselves more viable, to be more vibrant and to move
with the times.
This is a step in that direction as far Twitter is concerned.
I hope you found this video today to be useful.
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Till next time, I am Steve Dotto.
Have fun storming the castle!