Twitter announced this afternoon that it has added a new tab called Activities where all kinds of activities by the people you follow are made visible: when they follow new people, when they add people to lists, when they favorite a tweet and more. The same types of activities, when regarding your account, have been added to what was your Replies tab.
What does this mean? It means that many different streams of the most interesting data published by Twitter, always in public but never all in one place and never right in the center of attention, have been illuminated and put front and center. Some people are already complaining that it detracts from the clean simplicity that is Twitter’s key differentiator – but as someone who has long paid attention to who is following whom and what is being favorited, I find it fascinating.
Every social gesture on the site, every structured action you can take, is now first class content on Twitter. It’s beautiful, really, and it’s rolling out to users starting today.
Everyone will know when you start following Justin Bieber.
Two questions I’ve asked Twitter: Will all these forms of data become available in a single API call? That would be great for developers. And will Activity Streams become visible inside Twitter clients like Tweetdeck and Twitter for iPhone? The company’s response: “As always, we comment on features when they’re available.”
