Twitter activates button in iOS app for tweets in chronological order
Twitter is giving its iOS app a button that will allow users to view recent tweets in chronological order, without algorithmically positioned tweets. The feature will also be coming to Android soon.
Twitter calls the button in question ‘sparkle’ and by clicking on the stars, users are temporarily shown tweets in a chronological order, with new tweets being posted first. In this view no tweets have been added based on algorithms.
It is not possible to permanently activate the chronological display. According to Twitter, “if they look at the timeline again later,” users will see the Top Tweets again. These are tweets that have been selected on the basis of an algorithm.
Twitter already announced in September that there would be an option for tweets in chronological order. In November, the presence of the toggle was already discovered in the iOS app, but Twitter did not disclose any details about it at the time.
It is not yet clear when apps for other platforms and the browser version of Twitter will receive the ‘sparkle’ button. Twitter says it will add the functionality “in the coming weeks”. iOS app users will get the feature this week.