In case you haven’t heard, Twitter just announced some changes to its terms of service and privacy policy, along with the introduction of some new features that will change the way Twitter works for its users moving forward. Here are six changes to Twitter that you might not have noticed yet if you’re still using the platform the same way you always have been, but that could affect your daily use of Twitter going forward. 6 New Twitter Features You Might Not Know About
1) See Tweets from people you follow in a different order
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One of Twitter’s newest updates is to present Tweets from people you follow in a different order than your timeline. This feature, called Best Tweets First, highlights tweets that are deemed more important than others. How does it do that?
2) The button that says Show the best tweets first
This new feature will be turned on by default, but you can switch it off at any time. Go to Settings > Timeline and find Show best tweets first. This setting won’t affect your timeline if you turn it off. If you like seeing fewer posts in your timeline, but still want to occasionally see new tweets at their natural times, we recommend turning this setting off and using Manage filters instead of making multiple unfiltered lists.
3) Mute Replies and Mentions
If you’re ever frustrated with a never-ending cascade of replies, it may be because you’ve accidentally left your @ replies and mentions enabled in your account settings. To cut down on all these automatic notifications, go to your account settings and turn off mentions and replies. This will also limit new follower notifications to only those who have requested to follow you.
4) Watch out for hidden hashtags
Hashtags may seem like a no-brainer for busy tweeters, but a lot of people are still new to using them. If you’re someone who uses hashtags in your tweets on a regular basis, make sure that you know how they work! Don’t forget that words spelled with numbers (like #cute or #10) will also trigger a hashtag search.
5) Manage your notifications better
Getting too many notifications in your feed can be distracting and annoying. One way to cut down on unimportant tweets is to manage your settings so you’re only receiving important notifications. First, head to your profile page, then click on Settings and privacy, then Notifications. From here you can change what types of things you see notifications for (retweets, replies) and how often you receive them.
6) Download your data
Recently, Twitter made its data more accessible to users. For example, you can now download a CSV of your tweets and who you follow with a few clicks. Your data will include such information as when you joined Twitter and your tweet history. This is useful for all sorts of reasons—for example, if one day we found out that all our tweets were being deleted by Twitter due to some sort of technical error, we could use our exported data to recreate our timeline.