Twitter's CFO Hinted At A More Facebook-Like Newsfeed, And Twitter Is Freaking Out
During the Citi Global Technology Conference, Noto offered a glimpse into Twitter's future, bringing up the possibility of algorithm-driven content, updated search, and group chatting.
"If you think about our search capabilities we have a great data set of topical information about topical tweets," Noto said. "The hierarchy within search really has to lend itself to that taxonomy."
That requires "an algorithm that delivers the depth and breadth of the content we have on a specific topic and then eventually as it relates to people," he continued.
Noto said Twitter's new head of product, Daniel Graf, is making search capability one of his top priorities for the upcoming year.
Another change coming Twitter's way will directly impact the newsfeed. Currently, a Twitter feed displays tweets from users that you follow in reverse chronological order. But this may no longer be the case.
Twitter has already been testing adding in some tweets from users that you don't follow. And now they're looking into switching up the order in which tweets appear.
"Putting [timely and relevant tweets] in front of the person at that moment in time is a way to organize that content better," Noto said at the conference.
But he was quick to reassure the audience that Twitter won't be up and changing all at once.
"We're going to do all of these methodically. We test and make sure we understand what the implications are," he said. "Individual users are not going to wake up one day and find their timeline completely ranked by an algorithm."
Nonetheless, Twitter is already freaking out.