Social Media: It’s Official, Twitter Makes Major Change to What Can Appear in Your Timeline
If you’re seeing tweets from people you don’t follow in your timeline it’s not a glitch but part of a new Twitter policy.
From Quartz:
In addition to the basic, essential definition of a Twitter timeline—“all Tweets from those you have chosen to follow on Twitter”—plus retweets and ads, there’s a new section:
[From Twitter] Additionally, when we identify a Tweet, an account to follow, or other content that’s popular or relevant, we may add it to your timeline. This means you will sometimes see Tweets from accounts you don’t follow. We select each Tweet using a variety of signals, including how popular it is and how people in your network are interacting with it. Our goal is to make your home timeline even more relevant and interesting.
In most cases, these seem to be tweets favorited, but not retweeted, by people you follow. That change has concerned some users: Will everything they favorite—even semi-private tweets—be shown to their followers? It seems the answer is no; Twitter is only looking to highlight popular or relevant content.
Read the Complete Quartz Article, Links to Relevant Related Articles
See Also: What is a Timeline? (via Twitter)
Filed under: News, Patrons and Users

About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.