A new program being reported today will make Twitter easier to use for following specific topics and trends.
CNET writer Erin Carson reveals today that a new Topics feature at Twitter will leverage the principle of recommendation engines to show users content based on what they’ve already looked for.
This is a prime example of the kinds of new consumer services being based on machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms.
“Twitter is promising that the Topics tweets you’ll see in your timeline will come from accounts with credibility,” Carson writes. “It’ll check whether an account normally tweets about the topic, and what kind of engagement a tweet is getting from other people who also tweet about the topic.”
However, Twitter is staying away from politics – recent reports show a range of issues that will not be covered in the social media platform.
Twitter’s Jack Dorsey has been trying to distinguish his business from Facebook, where Mark Zuckerberg has promoted free-speech rights in hearings based on potential misinformation that goes out through Facebook posts.
“This isn’t about free expression,” Dorsey tweeted October 30. “This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It’s worth stepping back in order to address.”
However, Twitter has apparently stopped short of deleting posts mentioning the name of the whistleblower involved in impeachment hearings for the president, which Facebook and YouTube have both done.
We’ll continue to bring you the latest on what “big social media” is doing in the blogosphere.
