In an effort to present more relevant news stories, Twitter has relaunched its "Discover" tab with direct input from users’ personal networks. “Google News, meet Twitter
News,” PCMag remarks.
“Twitter's ‘Discover’ tab was a big part of the major
redesign that the service undertook back in December,” The
Verge recalls. “Now Twitter has made some changes to tailor it more to specific users.”
Indeed, "this update is part of our ongoing development of Discover,” Satya
Patel, vice president of product for Twitter, explained in a blog post. “We will continue to work
to make discovery on Twitter a magical experience that brings you instantly closer to the information that matters most to you.”
“Magical” or not, “as a platform with
its own language, idiosyncrasies and methods of browsing, it’s difficult for the average newcomer to get used to [Twitter’s] ecosystem and find new sources of content,” according
to AllThingsD.
“That’s one of the problems with Twitter,” GigaOm writes. “So much happens in the flood of tweets, and there are limited
ways of understanding how it all fits together. Users can also reply, retweet or favorite tweets, or add their own commentary on a story from the new Discover Tab.”
“The
Discover tab updates will likely go unnoticed by most users as they’re more algorithmic than cosmetic,” writes VentureBeat. “But if Twitter can use this tab to do a better job at presenting stories people want to see, the improvements could go along way to hooking new users and
getting passive Twitterers to engage more on the information network.”
Regarding the real-time nature of the Discover tab, “Twitter’s efforts in this area represent a real
point of competition for Google,” writes WebProNews. “Not that
Twitter and Google are competing on search in general, but Google’s greatest threat is users’ decreased reliance on it for various search tasks.”