Twitter drops the #Discover tab in favor of Trending Topics
Lately, Twitter Inc. has not been scared to try new things, as the microblogging service has added and tweaked several features such as “While you were away,” improved retweet quotes, and so on. Today, Twitter made another change to its mobile platform by replacing the old #Discover tab with a new trending topics feature.
“Trends are a great way to find out what people are talking about on Twitter at a given moment and at a single glance,” Group Product Manager Gabor Cselle wrote on Twitter’s blog. “Starting today, we’re making some updates to the trends experience on mobile to make them more informative and easier to find.”
The #Discover tab was a way for users to find new content that they would not normally see through their regular Twitter feed. Unfortunately, because most trends were obscure hashtags without any context, it was not always easy to see exactly what is going on. This is especially true for acronyms used as hashtags, which are common for live events or TV series with long names like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (#IASIP).
“We’re moving trends to the search page and retiring #discover”
The new trending topics feature takes the guesswork out of the old #Discover format by adding descriptions for trends. It also includes information by how popular the trend is based on number of tweets, as well as whether the trends is picking up or dying down.
“As part of this change, we’re moving trends to the search page and retiring #discover and activity for all iOS and Android users,” Cselle wrote.
For now, trending topics is only available for mobile users, and the web version of Twitter still uses the old #Discover tab, but according to Cselle, that will most likely change in the coming months.
“The new trends with descriptions experience is rolling out now in the U.S. in English for users who have tailored trends on iOS and Android,” Cselle wrote. “We’re currently experimenting with similar features on web and look forward to expanding this experience to more countries in the future.”
