Twitter has added a "custom timelines" feature wherein users can organize and share collections of tweets to other users.
"Share the best tweets about a topic you care about, or an event –– planned or unplanned –– that's happening right now. Whether you want to collect the best tweets about a TV show or help people find the latest information about fast-moving, real-time situations, custom timelines let you give everyone a place to follow along," according to the company blog.
Custom timeline differs from Twitter Lists in a way that the former is not self-updating. With it, users need to manually add every single tweet to the timeline and this can be carried out by dragging and dropping chosen tweets to the timeline.
Note that users need not to add Twitter accounts. It doesn't mean also that when you add a tweet from a person, all the tweets after that will appear on your custom timeline.
Like tweets, a custom timeline is public, which means it can be seen by anyone, and has its own page on the social networking site. However, following a timeline is not yet allowed, but users can lodge it on a website. This feature will present users a chance to improve their storytelling abilities through meaningful and more informative tweets.
For users to be able to create custom timelines, they should download first the software TweetDeck .
According to Twitter's blog also, the new changes "is rolling out over the next several days to TweetDeck for web, Chrome and PC, and will be coming soon to the Mac app."
Moreover, Twitter is also permitting developers to make customized and embeddable tweets through the addition of a new API (application programming interface).
In the blog, Twitter said, ""This new API will open up interesting opportunities, such as programming your custom timelines based on the logic that you choose, or building tools that help people create their own custom timelines, as TweetDeck does."
