Custom timelines in action

Earlier this month, we introduced a new way for you to curate the conversations around your favorite moments on Twitter. Now, with custom timelines, there’s a new way to organize your favorite Tweets of the moment. This feature allows you to curate a timeline of Tweets to connect your followers with the best Twitter conversation around any subject. And some of our most innovative users have already started to build them.

There are two main ways you can set up a custom timeline from scratch in a few moments:

1. You can hand-curate a custom timeline using TweetDeck, a free app to help you to filter and manage your Twitter streams;
2. Currently, a select group of developers can use the API to create sophisticated timelines and build apps with it. There’s more about this on our developers’ blog.

Check out a few examples of how people have already been using custom timelines across Twitter.

TV: Curate your show

Scandal star Darby Stanchfield (@DarbySOfficial) created a custom timeline ahead of the week’s episode which created a unique experience for fans as the show took place, combining fun fan posts with the best from the cast and crew.

The Voice host @CarsonDaly curated this timeline of the top Tweets about the show’s dramatic #VoiceSave live Twitter vote this week.

Sports: Follow a game, live

@BleacherReport built a custom timeline into its homepage to collate the best Tweets and images around college basketball, showing how timelines can make sense of a fast-moving game.

News: Debate a single issue

The US edition of The Guardian (@GuardianUS) used custom timelines to curate its #MyNSAQuestion debate, where correspondents answered questions on the topic.

Politics: Collect the top accounts in one place

Policy site @PoliticoPro collected Tweets from the top voices on energy policy for a new Energy Insider Tweet Hub. Here’s one of the three timelines created by the team, showcasing influencers, lawmakers and reporters.

Top tips

• Make sure that you tweet about your custom timeline. You never know, someone may add it to a custom timeline of custom timelines!
• Tweets get added to the timeline in the order you add them, so they are not chronological. You can delete Tweets later.
• You can embed the timelines by clicking the share icon in TweetDeck, which also allows you to set the size of the widget and gives you a live web URL.
• The timelines are live, which means whenever you add a new Tweet it will show up in all the places it’s been embedded.

We’ve set up a timeline of… yes, custom timelines. Let us know about yours:

Have you heard of other innovative uses of Twitter? Contact us at [email protected].