I think in those cases it would be better to implement pagination, but with a "from" ID, such that the first element in that page will be the one with that ID.

I think in those cases it would be better to implement pagination, but with a "from" ID, such that the first element in that page will be the one with that ID. I remember a post saying that this was faster, and more useful in cases like Facebook where the timeline is always updating. This happens to me all the time when I'm browsing news sites with pagination: I go back in the article history to catch up, then I leave it there a few hours and when I come back and go to the next page I see half of the articles on the previous page on top of the new one.