Twitter to launch new Facebook-style timeline in 23 countries

San Franciso: Twitter is planning to introduce a new Facebook-style algorithmic timeline in 23 countries, including India, as soon as next week in an attempt to bring the micro-blogging site to more people across the globe.

The new timeline will reorder tweets based on what Twitters algorithm thinks people want to see most, a radical departure from the present reverse chronological order of tweets in the micro-blogging sites current feed.

The new timeline is a way for Twitter to elevate popular content, make content accessible for everyone even if they are not signed in, and feed people what they want to see and discuss most.

"Before today, you could see individual Tweets, but it was hard to discover stories and conversations happening on Twitter without signing in. Now, you can check out a news story as it unfolds," Paul Lambert, product manager of Twitter, wrote on the micro-blogging websites blog on Tuesday.

"Its real-time and straight from the source, just like the Twitter experience for those who log in," he added.

The home timeline will be rolled out to people across 23 countries, including India, who visit the twitter.com homepage on their mobile devices.

However, it is not yet clear whether Twitter will force users to use the algorithmic feed, or it will merely be an option, BuzzFeed News reported.

Twitter is also planning to expand a refreshed twitter.com homepage, which is already available in the US and Japan, to 23 other countries.

In November, the company killed off the traditional term favourites and replaced it with likes.

However, the algorithmic feed would be, to date, the boldest change so far under CEO Jack Dorsey, who took the reins of Twitter in October last year.