Custom Timelines

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Navigating the Content Deluge: The Imperative for Personalized Curation

In the dynamic landscape of social media, Twitter's Custom Timelines emerged as a groundbreaking feature, offering users a new way to engage with content.

At the heart of this innovation to empower third-party developers with robust tools via the Twitter API. These tools enabled developers to craft unique, tailored experiences for Twitter users, enhancing the way they interact with real-time content.

Our collaboration with key industry players, including ABC, Bloomberg, USA Today, Epic Games, and Buzzfeed, was instrumental in testing and refining this feature.

Working closely with Alexa Kaspar, the design lead, we focused on creating an intuitive, user-centered design framework that would set a new standard for content curation and interaction on Twitter.

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Project Background

‍Twitter's vast volume of content often overwhelms users, diluting their engagement.

Our mission was to empower users with personalized curated content (ranging from events to TV shows), aiming to offer users a space of familiarity in the chaos.

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Solution Overview

We wanted to offer users a personalized content stream. These are not just filters but dynamic, real-time curated feeds focused on specific themes. Our design leveraged modular components, which, when combined with our algorithm, crafted coherent, theme-specific narratives from Twitter's vast data.

A crucial innovation was 'algorithmic choice,' allowing users to select from an array of custom timelines, each a unique lens on the Twitterverse, designed by third-party developers or our key partners.

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Creating a Developer-Centric Solution: The Development of Custom Timelines

How might we enable third-party developers to easily build and manage diverse content streams that resonate with users? By creating a scalable framework that can adapt to any content type, we strived to create a light-weight, yet powerful, solution that can be used by our customers, for our customers.

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Enhancing Discoverability‍

Led by Tony Pavés, the team tackled the challenge of making custom timelines easily discoverable to users. We experimented with 'timeline injections,' a sort of in-feed ad for custom timelines, and considered various directory concepts to house these new creations.

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Partner Collaboration‍

Working closely with our partners was pivotal. Neil Young was our Business Dev Lead, and facilitated the conversations with our partners.

Together, we co-developed timeline assets, ensuring they were not only user-engaging but also reflective of each partner's brand identity.

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My leadership in the Partner Experience (PEX) initiative was central to this collaboration. PEX involved setting up detailed workflows, training partners on timeline and content curation, and creating tools and resources, such as a Timeline Elements Builder, tutorials, and guides, to help partners effectively use the new feature.

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Research Insights on Custom Timelines

In our collaboration with AnswerLab, we delved into user interactions with Custom Timelines.

My role involved crafting the research scripts and developing prototypes, while AnswerLab conducted in-depth interviews with eight participants, focusing on their experiences with specific Timelines like 'The Bachelorette' and 'Popular Videos.'

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User Engagement and Content Preferences

Users appreciated the ability to follow multiple, topic-specific Timelines. This feature made their Twitter experience more streamlined and engaging, allowing quicker access to content they care about. However, there was a notable concern about the potential for information overload.

Users valued the comprehensive nature of Twitter and worried that too many Timelines might narrow their content exposure, hindering the discovery of diverse topics.

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Thoughts on Paid Timelines

The concept of paid Timelines elicited mixed reactions. Users were generally reluctant to pay for content that was previously free. They indicated that for a paid Timeline to be appealing, it would need to offer unique and compelling content that couldn't be found elsewhere on the platform.

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Recommendations for Improvements

Drawing from the study's findings, it's recommended that we enhance the visibility and customization options for Timelines to boost user adoption. While personalized content is a hit, the essence of Twitter lies in its broad, global conversation, which should be preserved even as customization options expand. Additionally, should we pursue paid Timelines, ensuring the exclusivity and value of the content will be key to user acceptance.

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Outcome & Results

During my time at Twitter, the Custom Timelines feature had not been made available for third-party developers yet. We had started with making Custom Timelines available for 25% of Twitter desktop users. The reception was positive.

We saw an increase in login days for users that adopted this feature:

• 13.6% increase / 'The Bachelorette' timeline

• 9.5% increase / 'Popular Videos' timeline

This was a clear sign that users appreciated this new level of control over their feeds. Unfortunately, due to new leadership at Twitter, any additional updates to this feature has been paused until further notice.