twitter-bird-white-on-blueTwitter users, get ready to see more tweets from people you don’t know. In a blog post, the social networking company revealed that it’s going to start showing people tweets from accounts they don’t follow.

Twitter recently ran a number of experiments showing people different sorts of content they didn’t ask for in their timeline, like recommended tweets and accounts they didn’t follow.  It wasn’t completely random, of course – the recommendations were based on accounts that users followed and their activity – but it’s something of a watershed moment for Twitter, which in the past has focused on only displaying tweets that users seek out.

Now, Twitter has updated its help page about the Timeline to inform people that they should expect to see more of that.

“Additionally, when we identify a Tweet, an account to follow, or other content that’s popular or relevant, we may add it to your timeline. This means you will sometimes see Tweets from accounts you don’t follow. We select each Tweet using a variety of signals, including how popular it is and how people in your network are interacting with it. Our goal is to make your home timeline even more relevant and interesting.”

Experiments of this kind are important to Twitter’s future. The company is under intense pressure from investors to keep growing, but its service doesn’t show its value as easily as Facebook. Plus, it’s easy for content on the social network to get stale, especially when people lose interest in whoever they’re following, or run out of content when they want to spend more time on the network.

By suggesting tweets and new accounts, Twitter could increase the amount of time people use the network, even if the immediate group of people that they’re following are fresh out of new tweets.

Of course, in doing so, the company risks alienating its enfranchised users. Everyone I follow is hand-picked because of what they bring to my timeline, and while I might want to see more from people they follow on occasion, I want to control that myself.

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