Nuzzel has created a prototype feature that allows users to see the most important tweets from their friends. That doesn't sound like a big deal but it potentially solves one of the problems with Twitter that users complain about most: The inability to immediately see the tweets that are blowing up on the timelines of people you follow.
Nuzzel founder Jonathan Abrams tells Business Insider that the feature is being tested and may not make it into a future update. Twitter investor Chris Sacca had urged him to try it:
—Chris Sacca (@sacca) September 2, 2016
Although Twitter does display some important tweets near the top of the timeline when you open the app, the vast majority are still displayed in chronological order. That means that if something hilarious happened on Twitter 20 minutes ago, you probably missed it and may never see it.
The Nuzzel prototype — which you can try for yourself here — shows the tweets that recently received the most retweets and comments from other people you follow. It looks like this:
No surprise that Trump dominates my friends' tweets — I follow a lot of journalists.
But, as always with Nuzzel, it did show me some surprises. I did not know that the wife of CNN's Brian Stelter was pregnant; I somehow missed that Lydia Polgreen had been made editor-in-chief of Huffington Post; and I am really glad Nuzzel resurrected this story about Peter Thiel allegedly submitting a "financial hardship" form in an attempt to get out of jury duty. (Clearly, stuff happens while I am asleep at night.)
Nuzzel's main aim is to take your social media feeds and only show you the news stories your friends are sharing. It is heavily used by members of the news media, and anyone who wants to cut through the personal nonsense that often dominates Twitter.
The company has taken about $5 million (£3.27 million) in total funding from investors such as Akash Garg (the director of engineering at Uber, and formerly the director of engineering at Twitter), Matt Cutts (former head of the anti-webspam team at Google), Nikesh Arora (formerly the vice chairman of SoftBank and formerly the chief business officer at Google), and Marc Benioff (CEO and founder of Salesforce).
