Twitter is making it easier to follow your favorite topics and events

Twitter has always been the ideal site for conversations and reactions around live events, be it a sports game, an awards show or serious breaking news. Up until today, you've been able to use the Twitter mobile apps to get notifications from specific accounts you're into, like an NBA team or a media outlet, as well as breaking news. But now, the company wants to take that one step further and make it easier for you to see the latest about events and topics you care about. You'll notice this in the form of push notifications that will be sent to your phone based on your particular interests, including who you follow and what you tweet about.

It's a feature designed for Twitter to be proactive about keeping you in the know about "what's happening now," and the hope is that as a result you'll spend more time in the app. If you're worried about being spammed, Twitter says it'll be extra conscious to not flood your device with notifications that aren't valuable to you. And, if you want to, you do have the option to turn off these types of notifications altogether by going to your recommendation settings.

In addition to this, Twitter is making changes to Moments (they're vertical now) and its Explore tab, which will now let you navigate by topic (such as entertainment, music, sports and technology) rather than content type (articles and videos). Similarly, Twitter's "Happening Now" feature, which groups tweets about ongoing events on the top of your timeline, has also been tweaked to show you breaking and personalized news. Once you're browsing that section, you'll see tweets with text, images and videos related to whatever is taking place at that moment. Of course, the ides with all these changes is for you easily see what people are saying about the things you're into and others that are happening around the world.

That's not it, though. With the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia kicking off tomorrow, Twitter is rolling out a dedicated hub for the tournament and individual pages for all 64 games. If you search the app or desktop site for "World Cup," you'll get tweets, scores, videos and Moments about every match. Soccer (football) fans will also see this pop up at the top of their timeline, so they'll have easy access to the news from the globe's biggest sporting event. Here in the US, Twitter struck a pivotal deal with Fox Sports to offer users access to highlights and a show called FIFA World Cup Now, which is going to stream live from Russia during the months of June and July.

Sriram Krishnan, Twitter's senior director of product management, told Engadget that the goal is for people to use these features to engage in "momentous" conversations in real time, about anything major that may be taking place around the world. "At the heart of it, Twitter is about what is happening right now," he said. At the same time however, Krishnan added, it is extremely important for every user to have complete control of their Twitter experience. That's why you have the ability to opt out of the new personalized and event news notifications. Aside from the World Cup hub, the rest of these changes will be coming to Twitter's iOS and Android apps in the coming weeks and months.

For Twitter, it's all about using relevant info to keep you in its world as long as it can, and these new features are clearly designed to do exactly that. It'll be up to you to decide how much news you want to consume.



via Engadget RSS Feed https://ift.tt/2y5O0XW
RSS Feed

If New feed item from http://www.engadget.com/rss-full.xml, then send me

IFTTT

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Evernote cuts staff as user growth stalls

Image
Note-taking app Evernote has fallen on hard times of late, culminating in its latest spate of job cuts impacting 15 percent of its workforce (54 employees). CEO Chris O' Neil -- an ex-Googler who took the reins in 2015 -- announced the firings at an all-hands meeting earlier today, reports TechCrunch . In a message on the Evernote blog , O' Neill admitted he'd set "incredibly aggressive goals" for the company in 2018. He continued: "Going forward, we are streamlining certain functions, like sales, so we can continue to speed up and scale others, like product development and engineering." The layoffs follow an exec exodus just weeks ago and the company's recent brand refresh (complete with a refined logo and wordmark). But critics are more concerned about its product, especially the free tier, which they claim lacks the perks to...
Read more

The best air conditioner

Image
By Liam McCabe This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter . When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here . After six summers of researching, testing, and recommending window air conditioners, we've learned that quiet and affordable ACs make most people the happiest—and we think the LG LW8016ER will fit the bill in most rooms. This 8,000 Btu unit cools as efficiently and effectively as any model with an equal Btu rating, and runs at a lower volume and deeper pitch than others at this price. Little extra features like a fresh-air vent, two-axis fan blades, and a removable drain plug help set it apart, too. The LG LW8016ER is a top choice for an office or den, and some people will find it quiet enough for a bedroom, too. If our main pic...
Read more

We won't see a 'universal' vape oil cartridge anytime soon

Image
Pre-loaded cartridges of cannabis concentrate are currently among the most popular means of consumption, and for good reason. They're discreet to use and easy to handle, a far cry from the dark days of 2016 when we had to dribble hash oil or load wax into narrow-mouthed vape pens by hand. But, frustratingly, an ever increasing number of oil cartridge manufacturers employ one-off design standards so that their products won't work with those of their competitors, thereby locking customers into proprietary ecosystems. We've already seen this with nicotine vaporizers -- which has a seen a massive rise in "pod systems" in the last few years, each outfitted with a unique canister and battery built to be incompatible with those of their competition. Is it too late for the burgeoning cannabis industry to set a universal standard for their product designs? ...
Read more