In an attempt increase user engagements and to enhance the shared user experience, Twitter has announced changes onto its social media networking platforms. Twitter Inc. announced it will personalize news for users and send them notifications of events, trying to attract a broader audience with one of its most comprehensive product updates in years.
“Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey often says we want Twitter to be the little bird on your shoulder that tells you what you need to know, when you need to know it,” said Keith Coleman, the company’s Vice President of Product. “When something important happens on Twitter, we want Twitter to tap you on the shoulder and say ‘hey, this is going on and we want you to check it out.’”
Dorsey, in a tweet, said the effort “really gets closer to what Twitter wants to be.”
Sriram Krishnan, the company’s Senior Director of Product, said the changes will be rolling out to users Wednesday. “We will be learning and iterating based on feedback,” he tweeted.
Twitter shares have raised more than 80% this year, as investors grow confident in the company’s turnaround strategy and pace of product innovations. Dorsey focused on using artificial intelligence to personalize content for people and improve the algorithms to filter out spam using automated accounts called bots. However, monthly active users only went 2.8% to 336 million in the first quarter compared to a year earlier—their slowest pace of growth in two years.
“The company isn’t a newsroom defining the biggest news of the day for its audience. We’re there to reflect the conversations that are already happening on the platform,” said Joanna Geary, Twitter’s Director of Curation and former journalist at The Guardian.
“This change we’re working on is designed to make it as easy to follow an event as it is to follow a person,” Twitter’s Product VP Keith Coleman said in a briefing at Twitter headquarters Tuesday. “Without following accounts, simply by tapping one tile, you’re getting the best of the conversation on Twitter.”