The problem, of course, is that this experiment is a big change to the way Twitter has always worked. Part of what makes Twitter great is that the timeline is relatively unobstructed. You see tweets from individuals you choose to follow and the tweets they choose to retweet. It's not like Facebook.

Hawkinson's timing was good. Although home automation has been around for decades, it's still far from mainstream. At the same time that SmartThings launched, Nest Labs, a "smart thermostat" created by former Apple engineers Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers, was hitting the market.

The intentions for this experiment are probably to help increase engagement. One could even argue that for content Twitter deems to be "breaking news," putting important tweets from the accounts a person's Twitter friends follow into that person's main timeline could be valuable.

The legend of Tarzan is so entwined with West Africa that it’s hard to know where to begin. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel, first published 100 years ago as Tarzan of the Apes, tells the story of John Clayton, a child born to a pair of shipwrecked aristocrats and raised by apes in the coastal jungles of equatorial Africa,