Twitter Beta Testing ‘Instant Timeline’ On Selected Android Users

For a long time now, Twitter has been receiving criticism for its tedious and painful signing up process.During the sign up, Twitter takes the contact from the user’s phone and checks which contact is on Twitter and then suggests the new user to follow those contacts. The user will see the posts of a person on their timeline only when they follow someone. This means that the user has to actually scrutinize the suggestions and select who they want to follow so as to see their posts.

However, now Twitter has now come out with a workaround. Although, Twitter had announced that they are working on ‘instant timeline’ last year in November, it is now that they have started rolling it out. Here is how it will work. Twitter will as usual access the contact list of the new user and will check which contact is on Twitter already. Then their algorithm will figure out who these contacts follow on Twitter to figure out which topics the user might be interested in. The user will then see popular tweets on those topics on their timelines. For instance, if your friends on Twitter follow a lot of football players or football news, the algorithm will guess that you might be interested in football too and will show you popular football news on your timeline.


Since it is made especially to entice the new users, the instant timeline will have perpetual reminders to follow people on the user’s contact. Additionally, there are built-in tutorials that explain things like direct messaging and other functionalities on Twitter. Eventually, when the new user will get a hang of the site and begins following people, the instant timeline will have less posts picked up by Twitter’s algorithm and eventually, it will become a regular Twitter feed.

Currently, the tests on the instant timeline are being carried out on a small number of new users and that too only those who are using Android OS. It is expected that if Twitter receives a positive feedback for these tests, the will soon make a full-fledged change, first on Android and then on other operating systems.

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