This week, Twitter introduced its new Recap feature “While You Were Away…” In a nutshell, the new function provides users with a snapshot of some of the Tweets they may have missed. We’ve only had 2 days to experience the new feature, so the jury is still out, but here are some of our initial reactions to the Tweet Recap.
We can take bathroom breaks again! The recap function is pretty comforting. While we might love the idea of sitting on Twitter watching the flood of Tweets go by, it’s just impossible to catch everything. Hell, you can miss a lot just taking a bathroom break. The recap reassures us that we’ll still be on top of things in the Twittersphere.
Where’s the off switch?! You can’t turn it off. Not that many people would choose to, since it’s generally helpful, but if you wanted to, it’s kind of annoying that you can’t. The New York Times does say that if you dismiss the highlighted Tweets pretty often, they’ll show you less and less of them.
It’s still a timeline. That’s always been a bit of a calling card for Twitter, so we’re glad to see they didn’t sacrifice the real-time nature of the Tweets with this new function.
Where are the customized filters?! We can’t control how the recap filters Tweets for us. So far Twitter’s being pretty vague about exactly how Tweets appear under the “While you were away” heading. Wouldn’t it be even better if we could filter it ourselves?!
Tell us what you think. Has your life been revolutionized by Twitter’s ‘While You Were Away’ feature?
