The time has come to control content, so says Twitter. This month Twitter will be adding new fields to tweet structures on return API calls. What does this mean? It means nothing to 99% of the twitter world however this change will inevitably effect how corporate entities use twitter and it will undoubtedly effect how recruiters, recruitment organizations (namely the smaller shops) will use twitter moving forward.

What are these filters?

You can read about the release here on the twitter development blog, but essentially the streaming API will have the ability to stack rank tweets based on relevance. The real question is who or what will determine relevance and who sees which tweets. The answer you will find will depend on who you speak with. 

Developers, big business, celebrities and those with massive (not large) followings will tell you this is great. Small business, freelance journalists and those with smaller (normal) followings will ultimately feel the pain. This is because the new relevance factoring is no longer going to be dictated by the overuse of silly and often irrelevant hastags. 

Will this effect your stream and people you tweet with daily?

If you have lists built out than the answer is no. This is because you control your 1 to 1 conversations. 

So, the real question becomes how will this effect those that are recruiting on Twitter? How will this effect the enterprise that is investing in Twitter as a channel to push information?

That's an interesting question and one that will be answer rather quickly. 

In the end I will say this. I agree with this change and I think that it's long over due. Too much trash and spam has flooded the Twitter feeds even after you have filtered the content.

Google made the switch adjust their rankings and relevance factors and it's worked, big time. Twitter is following in their lead.

Get used to it. Search has changed.