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Twitter's Facebook-style timeline could arrive next week

Buzzfeed claims Twitter will launch an algorithmically-sorted feed very soon.

Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Completing the process of Facebook and Twitter doing battle by copying all of each other's features, a report by Buzzfeed says that Twitter could debut its "algorithmic" feed as early as next week. Since it launched, the microblogging service has always displayed tweets in a reverse chronological order. Users have recently spotted tests where tweets were reshuffled out of order, similar to Facebook's method of sorting posts, and executives have hinted at just such a change for years.

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While a Twitter spokesperson declined to comment on the report, we know it is looking for ways to spark user growth, and the assumption that this could make the site easier to read might push the feature forward. Of course, longtime users and information addicts are worried we'll lose the current sorting option. At this point, it seems that all we can hope for is that it's not the default, but even that assumes the current sorting option won't be snatched away, either all at once or gradually the way Facebook did it.

Update: NBC News Director of Branded Content Josh Sternberg cites sources telling him the algorithms are strictly opt-in -- hopefully that's true, and they stay that way.