Twitter may become more like Facebook, and people are so upset they're declaring it dead

There's a meltdown happening on Twitter over a Buzzfeed report that Twitter may switch soon to an "algorithmic" method of displaying tweets by relevance, instead of the current way of showing them in reverse-chronological order, like a backwards timeline.

In other words, Twitter is thinking of becoming more like Facebook, which guesses what users will be interested in and shows those posts first. People can always switch back to a straight timeline on Facebook, but the setting isn't easy to find.

Twitter hasn't commented on the report. We don't know if it's true. We don't know if the switch will be mandatory or if people will be able to choose.

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Nonetheless, some of the reactions were amusingly over the top. A hash tag, #RIPtwitter, was even created to talk about the rumor:

 This proves a few things.

First, people on Twitter like nothing more than complaining about Twitter on Twitter.

Second, people hate change.

For journalists and hardcore Twitter users - who are few - the reverse-chronological timeline is essential, as it's the only way to navigate the stream of real-time information provided by the people and publications they follow. (Journalists particularly like it because it lets them see breaking news super fast and also gives them a record of who was "first" on a story, which is a point of pride that the rest of the world could not possibly care less about.)

The fact is, Twitter needs to increase engagement. It hasn't been adding significant numbers of new users for over a year now and has stalled out around 300 million monthly users. 

Showing people the information they're most likely to be interested in, rather than every meaningless tweetstorm and inside-y argument in precise reverse order, might actually make the service more interesting and approachable for the billions who don't use Twitter at all.