Show HN: Read someone else's Twitter timeline • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by theli0nheart » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 6:23 PM UTC

andreasklinger wrote: post #26

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.

It doesn't work for their users' core use-cases because they never made it usable in their core web and mobile products. They don't spend engineering time on making it useful in their core web and mobile products because their users don't use it. See the problem here?

It's like they gauged interest on half-an-MVP of a feature and never bothered to truly complete it and make it actually useful.

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

#32

Post by sulam » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 6:43 PM UTC

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.

This feature used to exist in the web client and was removed. I am loathe to say why because my memory is faulty and I wasn't directly involved with it, but IIRC there were (odd to me) privacy concerns and the usage wasn't high.

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

#33

Post by Tenhundfeld » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 6:48 PM UTC

mod wrote: post #29

msbarnett wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not exactly the same. There are a few reason I might mute someone (opposed to unfollow):

1) They don't know I've muted them, which can be nice for personal friends that are just too damn chatty.

2) They can still DM me, again useful for closer acquaintances.

3) I'll often mute temporarily, e.g., I'll probably mute several people for a week during the RNC convention, because they'll be much chattier than usual. Or I just recently muted somebody who would not stop with Brexit articles. I care about it, but as a USA citizen, I don't need 70 tweets a day about it.

4) I still see replies to the muted person (from other people I follow). I don't see tweets directed to other people unless I also follow them. So if muted-friend-1 tweets something and unmuted-friend-2 responds to 1, I'll see that tweet and can swipe over to see the full conversation. IOW, I still see "@mutedfriend that's awesome!", whereas if I unfollowed, I would only see responses that purposefully broaden their reach, e.g., ".@mutedfriend blah".

Anyway, not a huge difference, but yes, there are enough small differences that I'll often choose to mute rather than delete/unfollow.

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

#34

Post by edent » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 8:02 PM UTC

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?

Many of the accounts I follow only tweet sporadically. Some are weekly, some only at weekends, some in different timezones.

It isn't a novel which is needs to be read from start to finish.

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

#35

Post by Karunamon » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 9:15 PM UTC

mpa000 wrote: post #15

Fiaxhs wrote: post #2

Do not set the created list as public, this generates notifications to every person in the list. Kinda fun to explain afterward :D

I've found that people tend to use public lists as a way to insult people that they don't like. "List of nutjobs", "List of {blankety blanks}", etc.

I've both made (a long while ago!) and been on those lists. Damned if I can find it now, but I would have sworn that at some point, Twitter started dropping the hammer on people that misuse list notifications like that.

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

#36

Post by msbarnett » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 1:56 AM UTC

mod wrote: post #29

msbarnett wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You can mute someone's retweets, while still seeing all tweets directly posted by that person. That's what I was referring to above.

But it can also be useful to just outright temporarily mute someone who's at an event or something and swamping your timeline with irrelevant tweets that you know are timeboxed and will soon return to normal. A 7 day mute or whatever beats unfollowing and forgetting to refollow.