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Show HN: Read someone else's Twitter timeline

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Re: Show HN: Read someone else's Twitter timeline

#21

Post by danso »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #14

>> and a follow limit of 1,000 a day I only follow under a hundred people and find it cumbersome to keep up. How do you follow more than 1,000 users and manage to keep up with that stream?

I follow about 7,000 users, most of whom I don't know personally but have followed because we're in the same industry. But I don't ever attempt to read my feed beyond a couple of minutes. If a Tweet from a user I care about gets drowned out by 20 tweets from the randoms I follow...it's no big deal. I follow enough like minded people that many of them will retweet something that I want to see. And I like seeing random stuff from semi-random people...that to me is what Twitter is for.

Re: Show HN: Read someone else's Twitter timeline

#22

Post by balls187 »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #14

>> and a follow limit of 1,000 a day I only follow under a hundred people and find it cumbersome to keep up. How do you follow more than 1,000 users and manage to keep up with that stream?

I curate the number of accounts I follow to be exactly 187. That seems to be my sweet spot for Signal to Noise.

Re: Show HN: Read someone else's Twitter timeline

#23

Post by huskyr »

danso wrote: post #11
killwhitey wrote: post #4

Author here: In developing this I discovered that Twitter really doesn't care about lists. The limits on API usage and aggressive following are well documented, but anything about lists is minor. Also, if anyone from Twitter is reading: it would be nice if Twitter implemented a way to subscribe to someone's timeline instead of having to resort to this method.

Still befuddles me how badly Twitter has neglected list functionality. On every device/platform, there's a differently-obfuscated way to just see the damn lists you've created, nevermind create them. I get that making lists isn't fun, but they never seemed to try to make them easy to make. The end result is that new users who enthusiastically follow others see a stream of unfiltered shit and end up either just quitti…

I don't get this as well. The only reason i use Tweetbot instead of the official client is because it allows me to set a list as a custom timeline. This is such a wonderful functionality: i can easily switch between the 'firehose' of everyone i follow (around 700 accounts or so) and a custom timeline that has around 50-100 accounts that i don't want to miss. You get the feeling that the only thing Twitter cares about is building new features (e.g. moments) instead of improving existing features.

Re: Show HN: Read someone else's Twitter timeline

#25

Post by msbarnett »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #14

>> and a follow limit of 1,000 a day I only follow under a hundred people and find it cumbersome to keep up. How do you follow more than 1,000 users and manage to keep up with that stream?

When I first started using twitter, I found the upper limit on how many people I could follow without feeling overwhelmed was ~100, but as the years have gone by that maximum has grown to the point where I'm following around 700 people at the moment. Muting heavy retweeters helps a lot.

Depending on how chatty they all are, I think you could reasonably follow around 1,000 people and keep up with it alright. Much more than that and you're just periodically sampling a chaotic timeline you're not really engaged with, though.

Re: Show HN: Read someone else's Twitter timeline

#26

Post by andreasklinger »

killwhitey wrote: post #4

Author here: In developing this I discovered that Twitter really doesn't care about lists. The limits on API usage and aggressive following are well documented, but anything about lists is minor. Also, if anyone from Twitter is reading: it would be nice if Twitter implemented a way to subscribe to someone's timeline instead of having to resort to this method.

Imo they realized it doesnt work for their users core usecases that well. Therefore they removed efforts.

The problem here is in the end that there isnt a easy way for a company to communicate it's product strategy to api users and people are left to reverse engineer it.

Re: Show HN: Read someone else's Twitter timeline

#27

Post by unchaotic »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #14

>> and a follow limit of 1,000 a day I only follow under a hundred people and find it cumbersome to keep up. How do you follow more than 1,000 users and manage to keep up with that stream?

I follow a few 100 users for news but it's overwhelming to keep up if you aren't checking every half an hour. To scratch an itch, I use a chrome extension (shameless plug [1]) to sort them by popularity and I can also tune down chatty users without blocking them.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackybird/ddlhmpom...

Re: Show HN: Read someone else's Twitter timeline

#28

Post by joshkpeterson »

huskyr wrote: post #23
danso wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still befuddles me how badly Twitter has neglected list functionality. On every device/platform, there's a differently-obfuscated way to just see the damn lists you've created, nevermind create them. I get that making lists isn't fun, but they never seemed to try to make them easy to make. The end result is that new users who enthusiastically follow others see a stream of unfiltered shit and end up either just quitti…

I don't get this as well. The only reason i use Tweetbot instead of the official client is because it allows me to set a list as a custom timeline. This is such a wonderful functionality: i can easily switch between the 'firehose' of everyone i follow (around 700 accounts or so) and a custom timeline that has around 50-100 accounts that i don't want to miss. You get the feeling that the only thing Twitter cares about…

I moved to a new city and I wanted to see who I followed that lived there. I had to spend 8 hours learning the API and writing a script to put those people into a list. I shouldn't have to do that.

Re: Show HN: Read someone else's Twitter timeline

#29

Post by mod »

msbarnett wrote: post #25
at-fates-hands wrote: post #14

>> and a follow limit of 1,000 a day I only follow under a hundred people and find it cumbersome to keep up. How do you follow more than 1,000 users and manage to keep up with that stream?

When I first started using twitter, I found the upper limit on how many people I could follow without feeling overwhelmed was ~100, but as the years have gone by that maximum has grown to the point where I'm following around 700 people at the moment. Muting heavy retweeters helps a lot. Depending on how chatty they all are, I think you could reasonably follow around 1,000 people and keep up with it alright. Much more…

Bear with me, as I don't use twitter:

If you mute a heavy retweeter on twitter, isn't that the same as just deleting them? Why continue to follow someone you've muted?

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