Feb. 13--If I check my watch at 3:17, I don't want it to tell me it's 11:54 even if 11:54 tends to be more popular. I'll start checking my phone for the actual time, and it's bye-bye watch.
This isn't about my watch, though. It's about Twitter. But, you know, same thing.
Twitter is for me and many others the most useful social media platform around. Not everyone loves Twitter, but those of us who do value its real-time feed.
This instant window on the world at any given moment makes Twitter the go-to site when there's breaking news or something on TV everybody wants to follow together and discuss. The free flow can be ungainly, in some cases dull or ugly, but it can also be thrilling and informative.
Even when nothing all that exciting is actually going on, leaving users to kibitz and exchange links, the real-time lull is a useful reassurance that nothing of consequence is going on.
Like the limit on characters in each tweet, this is what makes Twitter Twitter.
So naturally Twitter wants to change that.
Its latest update includes a feature that rearranges the Twitter feed, abandoning its signature reverse-chronological order in favor of an order that favors relevance.
The feature is opt-in for now, but the eventual plan reportedly is for those Twitter users who prefer the real-time feed to have to opt out of the manipulated version.
In a sense, Twitter's eagerness and willingness to make a dramatic change is understandable. It reported about 320 million monthly users in the fourth quarter, which is essentially flat from the quarter before. It's not clear if the company's problems are a cause or response or both, but there's been an exodus of top execs over the last couple years.
Little has gone as was hoped when the company went public in 2013, when it seemed it might be able to catch the same lightning that made digital giants Google and Facebook so vital to marketers.
The share price is less than a third of what it was a year ago. Although fourth-quarter losses in 2015 narrowed from 2014, Twitter is not expected to get into the black until at least 2019.
But while the company hopes to keep up with that pace, if not speed it up, it's going to play with the clock of users' feeds.
So if at 3:17 its algorithms determine what was happening at 11:54 is likely to intrigue me more, that's what it will send me -- and potentially others whose contributions I would want to read -- so we'll all stick around longer in busy times and slow.
