It might be time for you to hold a vigil for your favorite a particular social media website. For many, Twitter appears to be on its deathbed.
Buzzfeed reported Friday night that the website would be introducing an algorithmic pattern (a la Facebook's newsfeed), writing "The timeline will reorder tweets based on what Twitter’s algorithm thinks people most want to see, a departure from the current feed’s reverse chronological order." As we reported in December, Twitter had already been testing out an out-of-order timeline on random users, and then, the results were not good then.
.@twitter @Support Hey, WTF? I want my timeline in TIME order...that's chronological, from most recent to oldest.
— Danielle Kenyon (@drkenyon) December 8, 2015
And with these most recent reports, the people...the people were outraged. Sad. Confused. Betrayed by the Facebookification of a website that could be as rogue as we wanted it to be. As the #RIPTwitter hashtag swept...Twitter...the website's CEO Jack Dorsey was bound to respond to the allegations, which he addressed this afternoon on....Twitter...where he assured the massed that everything's gonna be alright:
Hello Twitter! Regarding #RIPTwitter: I want you all to know we're always listening. We never planned to reorder timelines next week.
— Jack (@jack) February 6, 2016
Twitter is live. Twitter is real-time. Twitter is about who & what you follow. And Twitter is here to stay! By becoming more Twitter-y.
— Jack (@jack) February 6, 2016
Look at "while you were away" at the top of your TL. Tweets you missed from people you follow. Pull to refresh to go back to real-time.
— Jack (@jack) February 6, 2016
I *love* real-time. We love the live stream. It's us. And we're going to continue to refine it to make Twitter feel more, not less, live!
— Jack (@jack) February 6, 2016
Twitter can help make connections in real-time based on dynamic interests and topics, rather than a static social/friend graph. We get it.
— Jack (@jack) February 6, 2016
Thank you all for your passion and trust. We will continue to work to earn it, and we will continue to listen, and talk!
— Jack (@jack) February 6, 2016
Ok, ok! Not everyone believes you though, dude. Plus, we're not even sure what you really mean.
.@jack Trying to convince everyone that #RIPTwitter has been blown out of proportion https://t.co/gFNR8ZGw1P
— Scott Monty (@ScottMonty) February 6, 2016
#RIPTwitter is still incredibly hot right now; a constant stream of tweets kept pouring in as I was writing this.
WWE star John Cena weighed in, too, naturally:
Twitter: New year, new me. #RIPtwitter pic.twitter.com/KyDgQu35qD
— John Cena (@WWEJohnCenaUSC) February 6, 2016
It's been a rough few months for Twitter. In January, several top executives left the company, and stocks plummeted. People freaked out earlier this year when Twitter said they'd be getting rid of the 140-character limit.
Do you care? If anything, the "outrage" indicates this might be as good a time as any to delete our social media accounts, throw our phones in a lake like they do in rom-coms and move to an internet-free yurt deep in the Sierras. #Bye