Have All Your Friends Disappeared From Your Twitter Timeline?

 

I've seen stacks of people complaining about this recently, and have found a sort-of solution.  It won't make them all come back again, but it's something I've found that works well for me now, and what I'll be using until the Twitterly algorithms sort themselves out (she says, optimistically).

I'm talking about Twitter Lists - I've never fully understood their usefulness before.  Now I do!  You can make a list of all your favourite profiles and use that as your timeline instead, if you wish.  Here's how:

(Please note: I only use a laptop, don't know how it all works on a phone.)

1. Go to the list on the left side of your page, and click 'More'.

2. You will then see this.  Click 'Lists'.

3. That takes you to this screen.  Click on the little rectangle with the two lines, top right (new list).

4. You will now see the screen below, where you can create your list.  Give it a name, a description if you wish, and make it private if that's what you want to do.  Click 'next' in the top right hand corner.

5. You are then given the option to add people to your list

6 ...you do so by using the search facility - click 'add' for everyone you would like to be on this list.

7. Keep adding, and you will now have your list of people whose tweets you don't want to miss.  Obviously you won't be able to think of all those random people you see and exchange the odd emoji with on a regular basis, but they'll pop up here and there, and then you can add them to your list by clicking on the three little dots on the profile page (top right, under the header photo) and choosing the 'Add/remove from lists'. 

 

Here is mine.  If you don't make it private, others can follow it too.

The link to it is HERE

8.  You can now follow the initial procedure to go to your list every day - there you will see all your friends' tweets and nothing else :) 

 

9. Now ... once you start using your list, you may find that you don't want to see stacks of retweets, from people (like me) who retweet a lot.  Might be too many book promos, or just stuff you don't want to see, generally.  In order to see your friend's personal tweets but not their retweets, go to their profile page and head for those three little dots at the top.  

10.  Click on the three dots and you will see this - the first option is to turn off retweets.  Click!

Hope that's easy to follow and is a help!  Do pass on to anyone else you think might find it useful :)