14 DAY TRIAL // In its never-ending quest to win the hearts of all living and breathing things on this planet, Twitter is implementing a new feature called “while you were away,” which basically bothers you with stuff that you chose to miss.
While the feature will certainly be welcomed by many users who love being fully engaged with the microblogging platform, the same cannot be said about the people who willfully put their phone down and expect to see only the newest tweets when they pick it up again.
Bothers you more if you don’t like being bothered
For what it’s worth, this is how Twitter describes the new feature:
“A lot can happen while you’re on the go. To fill in some of those gaps, we will surface a few of the best Tweets you probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise, determined by engagement and other factors. If you check in on Twitter now and then for a quick snapshot of what’s happening, you’ll see this recap more often; if you spend a lot of time on Twitter already, you’ll see it less.”
This pretty much means that (at least some) users who prefer to employ Twitter’s services occasionally will actually be nagged more than the ones who stay on Twitter 24/7 and don’t mind the nags. There’s no faucet on this thing apparently, but could be soon, if our prediction turns out correct.
Twitter claims its goal is to help you keep up with the world. But for a platform that’s already cluttered with notifications, a constant flux of blogging, and a million ideas being exchanged every second, it might be a good idea to at least give users an On/Off switch.
The feature is kicking in today on iOS, Android, and the web (on twitter.com).