Twitter is under pressure to figure out how to get more people to use the service. The company on Wednesday released a change to the timeline and will insert more tweets at the top that a user missed while they were away. The new feature will help users catch up on "the best Tweet"s from people they follow, Twitter said.

Here's how it works. Users flip on the feature in their settings; then when they open Twitter after being away for a while, the Tweets they're most likely to care about will appear at the top of their timeline – still recent and in reverse chronological order. The rest of the Tweets will be displayed right underneath, also in reverse chronological order, as always. At any point, refreshing will return all new Tweets at the top.

Jeff Seibert, Twitter’s head of consumer product, said the latest release is designed for people who follow lots of users and check Twitter more frequently, hence miss more tweets. Whereas, he says, "while you were away" is targeted at people who haven’t checked in for several hours.

"Our goal was to refine the product and make it absolutely delightful for our core users—the people for which Twitter plays a great role in their life—and if we’re able to make it even more powerful for them they become our microphone," said Mr. Seibert.

The "best" tweets will be selected based on factors such as the accounts a user most often interacts with, the types of tweets a user engages with, a user’s interests and what is buzzing within their network of Twitter accounts.

Seibert addec that the new feature isn’t a reordering of the timeline into an algorithmic feed, as Buzzfeed reported last week.

Growth stalls in fourth quarter

Twitter' new feature comes at a period that its average monthly active users has stalled, according to the company's earnings report for the fourth quarter,

Twitter said in a filing it had 320 million average monthly active users in the quarter, unchanged from the third quarter.

Twitter's net loss shrank to $90.2 million in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31 from $125.4 million. Revenue rose 48.3 percent to $710.5 million in the quarter ended Dec. 31.

The social media company's revenue forecast for the current quarter missed analysts' expectations.