Twitter launches 'While you were away' feature for iOS app

In an effort to increase social engagement on the site and reflect relevant content to users, Twitter has launched the ‘While you were away’ feature on the iOS app. Now, when iOS users sign into their Twitter app, they will be able to see a snapshot of popular or relevant tweets they have missed since the last time they logged in. The Verge shared that it’s not clear what metrics Twitter uses to determine which tweets get slotted into the ‘While you were away’ recaps. However engagement levels and other factors will be used to determine which tweets will be seen in the feature. We are yet to see the feature on our iPhone or iPad versions of the app, so it’s not clear if this is a global roll-out. However Twitter has said that users who spend a lot of time on the site will see the feature less than others who access the site less regularly. [caption id=“attachment_251084” align=“aligncenter” width=“323” class=" “]  Image: Twitter Blog[/caption] Twitter’s blog post says that, their goal is to help users catch up with the world, no matter how much time they spend on the site. With a few improvements to the home Timeline, Twitter thinks they can do a better job of delivering on that promise without compromising the real time nature of site. Essentially this feature is Twitter’s way of ensuring that users get a simplified sense of what were the key tweets, discussions on the site, instead of getting inundated with irrelevant stuff. For Twitter, this feature is a must-have given that the social media site has seen user engagement and growth fall in the last quarter . Whether it will boost engagement remains to be seen and that can only be gauged once the global roll-out takes place. The feature is available for iOS users from today and will roll out to Android and desktop users soon.