Social media can be great, but it can also be overwhelming, especially as it demands your attention every minute of the day. Not everyone has time for that, but Twitter wants to ensure you never miss the important tweets.
At least, I think that’s the thinking behind its While You Were Away feature, which is reportedly rolling out to the userbase as the New Year starts to properly sink in.
Similar to the way that Twitter will already email you “top” tweets from within your social network, While You Were Away presents a selection of the digitally curated top tweets as a distinct section within the Twitter app itself.
In theory that could be remarkably useful if you’re only dipping your digital toes into Twitter on an ad-hoc basis, but only if the tweets that Twitter picks as “important” are actually important.
So far, for users who’ve had the service foisted on them, the reactions have been mixed, trending negative. There doesn’t seem to be a way to opt out of While You Were Away as a section, which could be problematic for Twitter.