Twitter is in the middle of some major changes and the social network has just rolled out a feature to all of its users. Folks using Twitter will now be greeted by the "While you were away…" collection of highlighted tweets.
Twitter is trying everything it can to boost its appeal for advertisers by adding new features, supporting more content, and keeping its users much more engaged. The "while you were away" addition is targeting all of those points by highlighting a new ad space for advertisers while possibly boosting the time users spend on the service.
This feature was first announced last year under the name of "Timeline Highlights" and it started rolling out to select mobile users a couple of weeks ago. Now the feature is available on both iOS and the web and many users will start seeing it on Android as well.
"While you were away" highlights popular or interesting tweets which the social network thinks you might enjoy. While there are some obvious uses for the algorithm it also makes us wonder if this is really useful for a social network that prides itself on its real-time model.