Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter's new timeline feature

blog.twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 135 posts

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#101

Post by blorgle »

jchendy wrote: post #97
blorgle wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is the assumption that the algorithm will do a half decent job at showing you important tweets. Judging by the facebook algorithm, which is utterly terrible at showing important stuff, it seems unlikely. Just another step in the facebookification of twitter to appease short term oriented shareholders who rated the growth too highly. It is already a mess, can't see how adding this will improve the sit…

I actually think Twitter's "while you were away" does a great job finding things I care about.

But how do you know with any certainty that it is showing you all the things you drfinitely care about? I find it only highlights one in every ten tweets I care about, so I still need to scroll through and read everything because it has missed so much.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#103

Post by snowwrestler »

wcummings wrote: post #91
snowwrestler wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this has already been real-world tested, and manual sorting loses to algorithms. Facebook had categories or lists (can't remember what they called them) and few people used them. Google+ had the "circles" as a key differentiator vs. Facebook, and it did not help them compete at all. I think social media lists are one of those ideas that seems great in theory, but whose value is dynamically unstable in rea…

Email is usually sorted manually, I think.

People hate managing their email, in my experience.

What was Gmail's original value proposition? You never have to worry about deleting or filing emails anymore, because you get a ton of space and really good search.

I know a lot of people do carefully file their emails, but Gmail shipped without folders at all and they've done well with that model.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#104

Post by davidpatrick »

yolesaber wrote: post #62
coldpie wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this seems like it might be useful for people who follow loads of accounts. I follow about 40, and I want to read literally everything all of them say. So long as it doesn't fuck up that use-case (e.g. by remaining optional), I'm fine with it.

That's what lists are for. I follow over 400 people but have them segmented into lists and its never unmanageable for me.

I feel like lists need more attention. It is such a pain to navigate to on mobile. A lot of people don't even know they exist.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#105

Post by davidpatrick »

Screw the Facebook copycat. I want a quick filter by my lists. Right now I only follow other deveopers, and have narrowed my usage of Twitter for that one use case. When I start following more than one "circle", the feed is overwhelming and I end up never looking at it.

I could even see a Moments section that is fed off people you follow.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#106

Post by barkingcat »

jchendy wrote: post #97
blorgle wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is the assumption that the algorithm will do a half decent job at showing you important tweets. Judging by the facebook algorithm, which is utterly terrible at showing important stuff, it seems unlikely. Just another step in the facebookification of twitter to appease short term oriented shareholders who rated the growth too highly. It is already a mess, can't see how adding this will improve the sit…

I actually think Twitter's "while you were away" does a great job finding things I care about.

For me, the "while you were away" feature shows me things I don't care about. I do indicate so by clicking the "X" to train their engine - but it hasn't shown me anything worth caring about.

For example, I really care about funny cats. My timeline is 85% cats, and I retweet funny cat pictures 65% of the time. However, the while you were away feature shows me things like opinions about voting, or holidays, or what co-workers are doing and saying, etc - Yah - it's in my feed, but I literally don't care. I spend 8 hours a day with my co-workers and hear all their tweets first hand. All I want are fun cat pictures from places that I haven't seen before to make the day easier to pass and to ward off depression... and it'd be great if twitter can make me a cat picture search engine. But for now they haven't done that for me yet.

Maybe they can allow a user to curate the "while you are away" algorithm so I can have a core set of twitter accounts that I really want to keep track of while I'm away ( https://twitter.com/cuteemergency and https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens ) and/or weigh explicitly which accounts I want to train my personal preference algorithms ... It would be pretty easy too since the lists feature already exists - just make it so the algorithm only pulls from an indicated list.

Until such a function exists I think i'll keep it off and just enjoy the cats.

Anecdotal, but I can see how this feature might or might not hit the target. All I can say is I hope they keep it an option that can be disabled or enabled and they don't take away the option box for this.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#108

Post by tyre »

tombrossman wrote: post #90
tfgg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I, and I suspect quite a lot of their users, stopped using Twitter for quite a while because the velocity was just too high, the signal wasn't good enough. The stuff you might have missed feature has actually made me use it much more, now I can actually catch those quality tweets. I'm sure someone is going to tell me that I should unfollow more people, but that seems like a pretty crude and destructive metho…

Well I'll say it then, you really should unfollow more people. To a point, the more you unfollow the better the signal to noise ratio improves. You just have to find that point. It isn't crude or destructive at all because you will see those good quality tweets from people who are heavy users. You will see them when others who you still follow retweet the good ones. Your feed should be a solid mix of tweets you curat…

Great advice.

I follow very few people I know in real life because they aren't interesting on Twitter. I don't feel bad about that — if you don't like what I tweet, you should unfollow me and we can still be real-life friends.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#109

Post by tyre »

snowwrestler wrote: post #103
wcummings wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email is usually sorted manually, I think.

People hate managing their email, in my experience. What was Gmail's original value proposition? You never have to worry about deleting or filing emails anymore, because you get a ton of space and really good search. I know a lot of people do carefully file their emails, but Gmail shipped without folders at all and they've done well with that model.

That said, their priority inbox is amazing. Automatically sorting into Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates, and Social helps me manage my day.

Automated, curated lists are great. Manual ones (e.g. folders) just add more for me to do.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#110

Post by sangnoir »

exw wrote: post #79
benten10 wrote: post #36

As the resident Twitter fanboy, I'd like to point out something most people here (and elsewhere) who support the change seem to be missing out. We (Twitter users) are not as much worried about our stream being polluted, as much as OUR tweets not being seen. Currently, as long as people are online, there's a certain guarantee that they will see it. You don't need to reach out for popularity, because they'll see it any…

> I understand your concern, but this seems to contradict reality... According to this article, only a small percentage of your followers actually see your Tweets: http://marketingland.com/facebook-twitter-impressions-90878

I think there are 2 types of twitter users. The first type follows many accounts and skim through the tweets with no effort to go through all of them. This feature is a Godsend for them.

The second type of twitter users, like myself, follow a short list of people, and we actively curate this list so that we can read all the tweets in our timeline. I have just realized that it is in Twitter's best interest if everyone was in the first group - which is likely the majority of users.

Post reply on HN