www.twitter.com has recently launched a new custom timeline. According to twitter’s announcement; “new custom timelines are entirely new type of timeline in that you create, you name it and choose the tweets you want to add to it”
Custom timeline are created by selecting tweets from different column-home, notifications, messages, lists, activities- and from other various account based on topic choice. Timeline is identified by its title and 160 character description. As new timeline are added, they appear at the top of the timeline.
Twitter custom timeline and twitter lists.
Twitter custom timeline and twitter lists appear to have the same similar feature except that timeline allows for collection of related content or similar topics while twitter are created by adding twitter users and little control is allow for choice of acceptance of content. With custom timeline you gather tweets or topics that you want and remove tweets that you don’t want on your timeline so as to suit you.
The twitter custom timeline has a shortfall; you can only create a custom timeline via tweetdeck. Tweetdeck is an application owned by twitter and this is only available through the web or Mac and chrome app. A desktop version is only available for window users-window7, 8, 2000, XP, etc
How to create twitter custom timeline
Creating twitter custom timeline is very easy and straightforward and requires few simple steps;
- Visit http://tweetdeck.twitter.com or open your chrome app.
Once you are page above, you can sign in with your twitter login credentials if you already have an account on twitter. But if you’re new to twitter, click on sign up to create a new account on tweetdeck.
2. Provide an email address and password and information, complete application and you’re good to go.
3. Once you sign in, click on custom timeline icon on the left hand side column as show above. The icon the arrow is pointing at.
4. Click on the blue, “create custom timeline:” from the pop-up window that appears
5. Add a title and description to identify the topic and related content.
6. Add content to the new column. You can do this by using the “move” icon that appears under each tweet when mouse hover over them. Click on the icon and drag them into the new column.
7. Sharing the custom timeline
Sharing custom timeline gives valuable opportunities for using timeline for business purpose. For example, showcasing promotional activity of a particular product on your custom timeline can increase the sales of that product. We shall look at the uses of the custom timeline later.
Custom timeline can be share in one of the 3 ways;
- Embed the timeline on your website or blog
- View it on twitter.com
- Tweet about it on timeline
Click on the small tab on the right hand side of your custom timeline’s title. A drop-down will shown
Click on ‘share’ as shown above. For the sake of this article, we are going to embed the post, click on embed timeline.
This will bring up a new window which may request you login to your twitter.com account. The page is where you now generate code which you embed into website or blog.
Click on create “widget” a few lines of code will appear below of tweets in your custom timeline. Copy the code and paste into your blog. Or blog post.
This is my custom timeline.
Let us round up this topic by looking the valuable importance of the new twitter custom timeline
8 ways online marketers, merchants, news reporters & others can USE custom timeline
1.Promotions and sales timeline: special promotional activity about a particular product can tweet. One can create a timeline about such promotion and sales activity of a particular product.
2. Customer review product timeline: the reviews of customers can collected in timeline and embedded into a website showcasing the value of such product
3. New product arrival timeline. The announcement of new products which one think that people would be interested in, can be tweeted and collected into a timeline.
4. Crisis report timeline- collection of tweets about a particular crisis and collected into timeline and people can follow all the scene as they unfold
5. Events timeline-collection of tweets about a particular event can be put into a story and people can easily for this story.
6. Twitter chat timeline- recent chatting can pull into timeline, live question and answers session can be organize in timeline
7. FAQs-timeline can be created for frequently ask question for a particular product or websites and answers to all those question provide in the timeline, clients or customers can easily be refer to such timeline for references.
8. Gossip timeline-what about creating a timeline called gossip timeline, in which tweets that likely to be gossip and humorous are collected and embed into website for sharing.
In conclusion, you can delete or add a timeline any time you wish. Twitter custom timeline have open up a new way of sharing ideas in the web. I believe that twitter in future develop a way to overcome the little shortfall of their custom timeline