28 July 2017

TechCrunch: “Twitter adds updates about interesting links, trends and accounts to its Notifications tab”

Your Notifications tab on Twitter might be getting a little more busy. The company recently added a new feature to this section on both mobile and web, which aims to clue you into what people you follow are up to – including whether they’re tweeting about a particular Twitter trend, sharing a link to a buzzing news article, or even following another user’s account.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because Twitter’s ability to track and alert you to this information has existed for years. But before it was only delivered via push notifications. It’s now appearing in the same tab where you track the activity surrounding your own account and tweets – like who’s retweeting you, favoriting your tweets, or following you.

Sarah Perez

I understand how some people might find the extra notifications overwhelming, but personally I like it. I noticed this change about a week ago and it’s nice to see confirmation that it’s an official feature, not a short-term experiment.

Twitter’s personalized notifications about activity in your network have usually been pretty relevant for me. The only downside was that they were delivered only via push notifications in the mobile apps (I’m pretty sure the web version didn’t show them). On iOS, if you had several personalized notifications available, when you tapped one to view in the Twitter app the others would be also cleared from the Notification Center, so they were suddenly gone for good. Now, they are all present in the Twitter app – problem solved!

Twitter Notifications on iOS including MagicRecs
Twitter on iOS with MagicRecs in the Notifications tab

I think the feature is intended primarily for people that are not very active on Twitter; it offers a way to catch up on what happened in their absence and to show them Twitter’s utility, hopefully encouraging more frequent visits.

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