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Twitter now lets you follow topics, not just accounts

You can keep track of sports or stars without following users.

After months of testing, Twitter is (nearly) ready to let you follow entire subjects rather than individual users. The social media giant has announced that its Topics feature is rolling out now and will be available worldwide on November 13th. Choose from over 300 topics (such as sports, the entertainment world and gaming) and you'll see tweets on the subject from authoritative accounts that you don't otherwise follow. This could help if you're unsure of who to follow or just don't want to follow certain accounts all the time.

Future updates will add more topics, Twitter's Rob Bishop told The Verge. The company has also teased the possibility of "narrow cast[ing]" your tweets to people who follow a particular subject, although we suspect that might take some work. You don't want your feed to be cluttered with Topics spam.

The addition joins a series of "finally" features that have reached Twitter in recent months. It's too soon to say if Topics will be effective in practice, but it's potentially useful for attracting and keeping newcomers. While Twitter can suggest people to follow, it can still be intimidating if you're new. This lets you quickly fill your feed with useful tweets, and might encourage you to stick around.