To stop your FOMO, Twitter now sends custom recommendations to your phone

Ever feel like you’re the last to know about that tweet or quirky must-follow user that everyone’s talking about? Because it knows that sometimes flicking through the noise in your timeline just doesn’t cut it, Twitter has released a new feature to actively inform you about what your network is up to.

Taking a step up from its existing discover features, which suggest promoted and organic accounts you should follow based on whether users you’re following follow them too, Twitter’s new release tracks whenever a significant number of people in your network follow a user or retweet or favourite a tweet — and then tells you about it.

According to senior software engineer in Twitter’s search and relevance division, Venu Satuluri, users of its Android and iPhone app will begin receiving the personalised recommendations through push notifications on their devices. Those who aren’t fearful about missing out on the popular tweets and accounts the users they’re following are engaging with can opt out of the notifications in the app’s settings.

At this point I follow everyone @MagicRecs suggests.

— Todd Johnson (@todd534) September 14, 2013

The new feature was adopted into Twitter’s apps after the success of a trial account, @MagicRecs, which sends users who follow it personalised direct messages about tweets and accounts they should consider paying attention to in real time. After testing out its algorithm and incorporating feedback from early adopters, the team incorporated it as a new tool to help users find out about trending discussions and when users are gaining extra attention or new ones join the social network site. If you prefer the DMs, Satuluri says the @MagicRecs account will still be left running as an experiment.