Fresh off IPO, Twitter announces custom timelines for tweets

For its first new major feature since becoming a publicly traded company, Twitter on Tuesday announced custom timelines, which are public feeds that users can create and add tweets to.

Using the TweetDeck app, users can create new custom timelines and name them whatever they want. Once the timeline is created, users can add tweets manually. Later on, users also will be able to program custom timelines to grab tweets on their own.

“This means that when the conversation around an event or topic takes off on Twitter, you have the opportunity to create a timeline that surfaces what you believe to be the most noteworthy, relevant Tweets,” Twitter said in a blog announcing the feature.

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Each custom timeline will have its own Web address and page. Users can also embed the timeline onto other websites.

Twitter gave a few examples of ways that users and organizations can use custom timelines. The show “The Voice” has created a custom timeline to serve as a companion to its Tuesday night TV broadcast; Twitter #music is using the new feature to aggregate popular tweets from musicians; and the Guardian is using an embedded custom timeline for a Q&A session, where it will curate questions from readers.

On TweetDeck, users can create custom timelines by clicking the “+” icon to add a new column and selecting the “Custom Timeline” option. They then name the timeline and give it a description. Users can add tweets to their custom timelines by clicking on tweets’ “move” icon, which has four arrows, and then dragging the tweets into the custom timeline column.

Twitter said the ability to create custom timelines will be made available to all TweetDeck users over the next several days.

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