Twitter will be dropping the #Discover and activity tabs in favour of new ‘Tailored Trends’ section. The ‘Discover’ tab showed users topics which were trending or popular within their network.
Dropping the Discover tab does not mean that Twitter is doing away with the ‘trending topics’ concept. The same information will now exist within the “Search” tab on the blogging site, where trends will now include a more detailed description. The new trend listings will include a short description of each topic, how many tweets have been sent and whether a topic is trending up or down.
However, the move means that Twitter users will now not be able to see activities on the basis of the people they follow.
“We know that trends aren’t always self-explanatory, so now you’ll see a description below each trend. Since trends tend to be abbreviations without context, like #NYFW, a description will make it clear that this trend is about New York Fashion Week. The new trends experience may also include how many Tweets have been sent and whether a topic is trending up or down,” Gabore Cselle, product manager for the Content and Discovery group of Twitter, noted in a blog post announcing the change.
“As part of this change, we’re moving trends to the search page and retiring #discover and activity for all iOS and Android users. We’ve been working to make content easier to find over the last several months in places like your home timeline – with recaps and Tweets from within your network – and through efforts like MagicRecs. We’ll continue to make improvements like these in the future.”
The new feature is only available in English and in the U.S. both on iOS and Android platforms beginning Wednesday. The micro-blogging giant also said that it is currently experimenting with “similar features” for its Web interface and that the new feature will be rolled out to more countries in the future.
Worst idea ever. #Discover was far more useful than trends. If you used Twitter to keep up with the news, it’s officially broken. This is a terrible change and one that will cost Twitter a lot of users.