Twitter · Strategy · Senior · 45 to 60 minutes

Should Twitter Rework the Timeline?

Twitter is a social network where people post short messages and follow accounts to see a real time public conversation. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

Strategic thinking
Systems thinking
Feed design
Metrics
Executive communication

The situation

The head of product asks you, a senior PM for Home Timeline, for a strategy recommendation. Twitter's core experience is still the timeline, but as tweet volume and follow graphs get denser, users report opposite problems at once: they miss posts they care about, while the feed can also feel noisy, repetitive, or dominated by a few high output accounts. New users may not know whom to follow, while long time users expect Twitter to feel immediate and under their control. Leadership believes the next stage of growth depends on making the timeline more valuable, but there is disagreement about where to intervene. One camp wants better ranking and recommendations inside the feed. Another argues the deeper issue is the network graph itself, who people follow, how one way following works, and how that structure shapes conversation. Because the timeline is the product's main surface, a change here could affect engagement, trust, posting behavior, and the kind of public discourse Twitter is known for. You need to recommend what strategic bet Twitter should make next, and how to de risk it.

What to produce

A 3 page strategy memo.

Your answer must

Diagnose the core problem in the current timeline, separating user symptoms from underlying causes in ranking and network graph design.
Present 3 strategic options, including keeping the timeline mostly as is, and compare their benefits, risks, and likely second order effects.
Recommend one strategy and a sequenced plan for the next 12 months, including what to test first and what decision gates would trigger deeper investment.
Define a success framework with primary metrics and guardrails that cover user value, ecosystem health, and trust, not only engagement.
Explain how your recommendation would affect at least four groups: new users, long time users, high frequency posters, and the overall public conversation on Twitter.

Constraints

Work within Twitter's existing core product, short posts, follows, replies, reposting, and the home timeline.
Do not assume a full rebuild of the social graph or a mandatory behavior change from all users in the near term.
Your plan must be incrementally testable because the timeline is Twitter's highest traffic surface and mistakes would be highly visible.
Do not rely on major policy, partnership, or moderation changes outside the product team's direct control.

Format

Use five sections: problem framing, strategic options, recommendation, rollout and risks, metrics and guardrails.

How Twitter actually played it

Long analysis of how feed ranking and graph design decisions shaped Twitter and what happens when a service's timeline is reworked. Useful for PMs thinking about algorithmic feeds as core product architecture.

The feed algorithm is a product decision, not a back-end detail
Network graph design shapes social dynamics

Built from How to Blow Up a Timeline by Eugene Wei.