Twitter finally brings its ‘ile you were away’ feature to Android

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Published 24 Feb 2015

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Android owners are finally getting Twitter’s new ”while you were away” feature that rolled out to iOS nearly a month ago.

en you launch the Twitter app you’ll see a “while you were away” label at the top of the screen, which takes you to an algorithmically curated recap of tweets that you didn’t see when you were off doing other things.

If you’re on Twitter often, you’ll see the suggestion far less than if you only check in sporadically, according to a Twitter blog post. You can also just tap the large X next to the “while you were away” message to ignore it altogether.

wer users may not be thrilled with the new feature, as it introduces a Facebook-style curation of what may be perceived as stale content instead of what’s happening right now. However, it could be effective at easing in new users to Twitter who feel overwhelmed by the deluge of content.

The story behind the story: This new feature is one of many Twitter CEO Dick Costolo plans to roll out this year to attract more people to Twitter keep the current user base more actively engaged. Costolo has been under fire from unhappy shareholders unsatisfied with Twitter’s current roadmap to exp the number of new Twitter users.