Back in August, I highlighted an upcoming Twitter feature that allows users to follow topics in their timeline, much like they follow accounts today. The release of the feature is imminent, and Casey Newton has posted an update in The Verge. It opens with this scenario:
Recently, a friend told me he wanted to spend more time using Twitter, but he didn’t quite know how. His primary interest is comedy, he told me, and he hoped to find a way to see comedians’ best jokes on Twitter as they were posted. But when he followed comedians, he mostly saw a lot of self-promotion — tour dates, late-night appearances, and that sort of thing. No matter your personal interests, there are countless good and relevant tweets on Twitter. But where are they?
A person realizes they have an information need. The system he or she is using isn’t meeting that need. What to do?
It’s the perfect framing for an information architecture challenge.
Twitter Topics: follow subjects automatically in the timeline