It has been announced that Twitter will soon be taking another controversial step towards being a selective channel rather than a simple, up-to-date stream of tweets from all the people a user follows.
The company announced that it will be placing selected tweets from un-followed users in highly visible parts of users news streams.
This follows an unpopular test in which Twitter managers trailed the new strategy.
Trever O’Brien, a member of Twitter’s production team explained in his blog that: “Choosing who to follow is a great first step – in many cases, the best tweets come from people you already know, or know of. But there are times when you might miss out on tweets we think you’d enjoy.”
This has raised questions in the minds of many over whether Twitter is becoming less of a free social media platform and more of a pre-defined channel and how ‘the best’ tweets will be chosen. However Mr O’Brien believes that the move will be positive for users.
He said on his blog: “Testing indicated that most people enjoy seeing tweets from accounts they may not follow, based on signals such as activity from accounts you do follow, the popularity of the tweets, and how people in your network interact with them.”
The move has upset many purists but is drawing a positive response from Wallstreet, where its shares gained almost four percent in value.