Twitter updates Discover tab, makes trending topics more relevant

Another day, another Twitter update. Twitter released a new version of the’Discover’ tab on its website, which will display topics, news and trends that are more relevant to your interests.

Previously, the Discover tab displayed suggestions of who to follow, trending topics and categories of interest. Now, the update does all of that, but also gives greater prominence to the social aspects of trending topics – so, if a few of the accounts you follow (and the users they follow) are all talking about the same thing, it will appear in your discover feed. It groups the tweets so that it’s easier to spot major breaking news in your extended network and topics in your area of interest.

You can click on ‘view tweets’ to see exactly what users said about the topic, and contribute to the conversation yourself without leaving the discover tab, just by clicking ‘tweet this story’. You can also retweet, favourite and reply to the tweets to join the conversation.

It’s not perfect, but the topics under the ‘stories’ subheading in the discover tab are generally more aligned with your specific interests than whatever random hashtag is trending at the moment (case in point: #ThingsThatGetYouFriendZoned). It also makes it easier to find new users to follow (who tweet about things you actually care about).

Twitter has already started rolling out the update on Twitter.com, and plans to release updates for their Android and iPhone apps soon.