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The Feed Is Dying

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Re: The Feed Is Dying

#21

Post by md224 »

Jgrubb wrote: post #6
yolesaber wrote: post #2

I recently got the algorithmic timeline for one of my more popular Twitter accounts. The algo has rendered it completely useless - it prioritizes all the wrong stuff and the lack of chronological ordering made it literally impossible to use during the debates. I wanted the sharp minute by minute commentary of my friends and news outlets but instead I was getting memes and dumb retweets from days ago. At least give th…

On the web version go Settings -> Account. Under the "Content" section uncheck "show me the best tweets first". iOS app has a similar setting, and it stays synced with whatever is set there so however you disable it.

I don't know... I unchecked that a while back and I still get annoying "while you were gone..." curated shit. Maybe I have to log out/in or something?

Re: The Feed Is Dying

#22

Post by partiallypro »

erichocean wrote: post #12
partiallypro wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But making the algorithmic feed the default, alone, is enough to kill the platform. For the mere fact of nudging, and human laziness. It will just make the shit rise to the top, instead of the hidden gems that make Twitter golden. Twitter has to be one of the most poorly run tech companies, outside of Yahoo. They changed their API token limits, and destroyed 3rd party clients. They bought TweetDeck and then utterly d…

> Facebook has figured this out and that's why they are rolling out offerings like Paper Right, but hasn't Paper been a gigantic flop?

Maybe, it's too early to tell. The thing is that Facebook has to convince content providers to do it...Twitter already has them doing it; they just don't seem to know the value. Facebook is for sharing links, to me that's a lot less valuable than original content in the space (per user).

I'm not saying Twitter should be worth more than Facebook, only that their core component is undervalued, but Twitter seems keen on killing it because they are trying to focus on meaningless stats like MAUs, which have only a small importance to do with what their model should be.

If Twitter were under someone who saw it as an information company instead of a social media platform, imo, it would be a steal of a company at the current market price...unfortunately Jack and his team are incompetent.

Re: The Feed Is Dying

#23

Post by dk8996 »

yolesaber wrote: post #2

I recently got the algorithmic timeline for one of my more popular Twitter accounts. The algo has rendered it completely useless - it prioritizes all the wrong stuff and the lack of chronological ordering made it literally impossible to use during the debates. I wanted the sharp minute by minute commentary of my friends and news outlets but instead I was getting memes and dumb retweets from days ago. At least give th…

I agree with you for live stuff but for other things where you were away for 3 hr, I think I would want something that gives me the best Tweets.

Re: The Feed Is Dying

#24

Post by dk8996 »

partiallypro wrote: post #5

The Feed is fantastic for live, on going events. I don't see how it can be replaced. Of course Twitter has meandered in using an algorithm in their timeline, which is just a huge mistake. The entire point of Twitter is that it's the world as it is happening now; it's still shocking that Jack, etc don't understand this fact and are continually trying to take the very things that made Twitter unique out of the platform…

I wonder if he is under pressure to keep up with Facebook and maybe make it more and more like Facebook -- that it can't be.

Re: The Feed Is Dying

#25

Post by dk8996 »

Animats wrote: post #14

"Enter the curated feed" We could call it a "blog", and the people who curate the feeds could be called "bloggers".

This would work but in this case the "bloggers" (who curates the feed) doesn't create the content. There is still blog, bloggers (creating content), and the thing that curates the content.

Re: The Feed Is Dying

#26

Post by PretzelFisch »

gue5t wrote: post #4

When users don't own their technology, they get jerked around by whoever does until they jump ship for greener pastures. You can claim the market will solve this (users will sell their time and speech to a higher bidder, now that Twitter's prices no longer seem competitive), but if people were empowered to have their computers do what they want, it never would have happened in the first place.

What user owned communication network ever caught on en mass and is used by most of the establishment?

Re: The Feed Is Dying

#27

Post by sbierwagen »

Twitter rolled out the algorithmic TL to my account the other day. Of the first 12 tweets on my TL, 8 were really badly targeted ads,[1] and the other four was one of my friends liveblogging a TV show I don't care about. Twitter shuffled the order of her tweets in doing so, of course.

The promise is that algorithmic TL will show you the best organic tweets, and relevant ads. In practice, the ads are trash and the organic tweets are just as bad as usual, but in the wrong order.

1: Diapers, cars. I don't have kids, and while I've been looking at cars, I sure as hell won't buy a new one.

Re: The Feed Is Dying

#28

Post by meric »

PretzelFisch wrote: post #26
gue5t wrote: post #4

When users don't own their technology, they get jerked around by whoever does until they jump ship for greener pastures. You can claim the market will solve this (users will sell their time and speech to a higher bidder, now that Twitter's prices no longer seem competitive), but if people were empowered to have their computers do what they want, it never would have happened in the first place.

What user owned communication network ever caught on en mass and is used by most of the establishment?

Email.

Re: The Feed Is Dying

#29

Post by iLoch »

md224 wrote: post #21
Jgrubb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the web version go Settings -> Account. Under the "Content" section uncheck "show me the best tweets first". iOS app has a similar setting, and it stays synced with whatever is set there so however you disable it.

I don't know... I unchecked that a while back and I still get annoying "while you were gone..." curated shit. Maybe I have to log out/in or something?

No that's just Twitter trying to jam bullshit down your throat.

Re: The Feed Is Dying

#30

Post by tschellenbach »

I think there is a place for both chronological and personalized feeds. Chronological works well if the realtime component is absolutely essential to your app. For apps that have a lot of content or users visiting infrequently you will often want to show the best content, not the latest content. That's where the personalized feeds come in.

I believe Twitter and Instagram are doing this because the chronological feeds don't work well for a large portion of their users. You do wonder why they don't disable it for their most active users. (why try to reorder something if the user sees it all anyway?)

We provide both chronological, ranked and personalized feeds over at getstream.io

Demand for personalized feeds is definitely picking up rapidly, also among smaller apps.

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