Twitter rolls out new feature offering recap of missed tweets

Twitter users will no longer have to scroll through hours of tweets to see highlights of what they might have missed since they last logged on.

The company has started rolling a feature called "While You Were Away" which offers up missed tweets a user might consider importnat. It pins those tweets to a user's timeline.

The feature, first announced back in November, has been offered to enough users that many media outlets are taking notice, although not all users are seeing it yet.

A spokesperson wouldn't comment but the company's VP of Product, Kevin Weil, mentioned it in a November blog post as part of overview of what Twitter planned to roll out in the months ahead.

"We're experimenting with better ways to give you what you come to Twitter for: a snapshot of what's happening," Weill wrote. "We can use information like who you follow and what you engage with to surface highlights of what you missed and show those to you as soon as you log back in or come back to the app."

The feature is similar to Facebook's Timeline and is the first time Twitter has broken from its tradition and offered anything non-chronological.

It also is part of Twitter's effort to boost user engagement as it attempts to close the gap with Facebook. Currently, Facebook has 1.35 billion monthly users compared to Twitter's 284 million.

Last year, it brought videos, Vines and GIFs into the home timeline, and introduced features that let you post multiple photos, tag people in photos and express yourself using emojis.

Twitter has also announced several updates that will make it easier to take a public conversation private, including the ability to share and discuss tweets privately via Direct Messages.