Twitter has announced Custom Timelines, a new feature that allows users and brands to organize tweets around specific topics into dedicated timeline feeds.Twitter is also providing an API to allow developers to build this functionality into their products.
This new Custom Timelines feature of Twitter is similar to the Storify.
This is the first new major feature of Twitter since becoming a publicly traded company.
Twitter is already providing many standard timelines such as, home which contains Tweets from accounts users follow, search which contains Tweets that match a keyword or term, the user timeline which contains Tweets from a specific account, and lists from groups of accounts. The new custom timeline feature will allow the users to create their own timeline by specifying various factors by themselves.
Using the TweetDeck app, users can create new custom timelines and name them whatever they want. Once the timeline is created, users can add tweets manually. Later on, users also will be able to program custom timelines to grab tweets on their own.
Twitter blog post says ,
“Share the best Tweets about a topic you care about, or an event –– planned or unplanned –– that’s happening right now. Whether you want to collect the best Tweets about a TV show or help people find the latest information about fast-moving real-time situations, custom timelines let you give everyone a place to follow along.”
And, it has listed below examples.
- Carson Daly (@CarsonDaly), host of The Voice, created a custom timeline to be a live companion to tonight’s competition.
- POLITICO is organizing the best Tweets from policy industry experts in this new Tweet Hub.
- The Guardian is hosting a Q&A and will curate the lead question, questions from readers, and answers from journalists into a custom timeline.
- Twitter #music has created new timelines that present the very best Tweets from superstars, best songs with tracks you can play right in the Tweet, and the best music Vines.
- And tonight, Bleacher Report will help sports fans keep up with the best moments from the Champions Classic match-ups tonight.
This Custom timeline lists the tweets talking about Twitter’s Custom timeline.
Custom timelines will be rolled out to TweetDeck for Web, Chrome, and PC over the next several days, and will hit the Mac app soon. Users have to click the new “custom timeline” column type in TweetDeck, and hit the “+” icon or use the “A” keyboard shortcut to add new custom timelines.
“To add a Tweet to a custom timeline, simply drag the move icon and drop it on the custom timeline column that you would like to update,” TweetDeck said in a separate blog post. “Removing a Tweet is just as easy – simply click on the ‘X’ icon on a Tweet in a custom timeline column and it will be removed.”
Once custom timelines are created, they can be shared via a link or embedded on websites. A custom timelines column will also be added to TweetDeck profile so followers can easily find them.
Each timeline is public and has its own page on twitter.com, making it easy to share so others can follow along in real time as you add more Tweets. And since custom timelines are part of the Twitter for Websites toolkit, users can embed these timelines on their website.
