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Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

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Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#31

Post by anonymoushn »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #15
nkozyra wrote: post #8

They've been battling the widespread preference for chronological timeline for ... well, forever. As the common belief goes, the "algorithmic" one is more profitable. I buy this, intuitively, because it seems natural that it'd be harder to sneak in something jarring if you were viewing a more traditional timeline. But I can't fathom why seemingly no effort has gone into monetizing a chronological timeline. Why is it'…

> They've been battling the widespread preference for chronological timeline Or the simpler explanation is that the chronological timeline isn't actually the preferred setting, outside of a small but vocal minority. If the chronological timeline is somehow hurting their profitability, why would they offer it at all? I think the more obvious explanation is that very few people were actually using it according to their…

> Or the simpler explanation is that the chronological timeline isn't actually the preferred setting, outside of a small but vocal minority.

Is this a simple explanation for why the feature automatically turns itself off after a week or two?

> just because the Tweets are ordered differently

This isn't what the feature does. More than half of the content in the algorithmic timeline was not posted or retweeted by someone I follow.

Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#32

Post by anonymoushn »

slimsag wrote: post #10
nkozyra wrote: post #8

They've been battling the widespread preference for chronological timeline for ... well, forever. As the common belief goes, the "algorithmic" one is more profitable. I buy this, intuitively, because it seems natural that it'd be harder to sneak in something jarring if you were viewing a more traditional timeline. But I can't fathom why seemingly no effort has gone into monetizing a chronological timeline. Why is it'…

I don't think there's any issue monetizing a chronological timeline. The issue for them I imagine is retention: with chronological, it's likely that when you visit Twitter the first few messages you see are not interesting and you leave. But if they put a tweet that's popular among your social group in front of you? Odds are that's interesting to you and you stick around a bit longer. I dislike that, to be clear, but…

Hotels can try boosting user retention, as measured by minutes spent in the room, by hiding guests' belongings while they are away.

Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#33

Post by tim-- »

abnercoimbre wrote: post #21
hirundo wrote: post #9

I feel like a smuggler. I closed my Twitter account due to such shenanigans, and now read my favorite tweeters via Nitter RSS feeds. None of the various Twitter bovine excrement comes along for the ride, just the words of the people I intend to follow, in the order posted. No ads, no trending topics, no shocking takes from a friend of a friend of a friend. And for me the read-only nature of this arrangement is a bonu…

What do you mean plugged? Twitter will find a way to shut down Nitter?

It wouldn't be too hard. Nitter is using a few unofficial APIs from Twitter.

Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#34

Post by elktea »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #4

I feel like I'm the only person in the world who likes the "algorithmic" feed. In theory I follow few enough people to be able to sit down and read every tweet - I rarely want to. The magical "algorithm" seems to do a reasonable job of raising tweets with high activity, or tweets from people I often interact with, to the top. This seems entirely reasonable to me, and if I want to see the rest, I can just keep scrolli…

I like both. When I run out of tweets I switch to 'Home' mode and get to see a whole new slew of things related to people I follow

Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#35

Post by bluefirebrand »

kmeisthax wrote: post #12
nkozyra wrote: post #8

They've been battling the widespread preference for chronological timeline for ... well, forever. As the common belief goes, the "algorithmic" one is more profitable. I buy this, intuitively, because it seems natural that it'd be harder to sneak in something jarring if you were viewing a more traditional timeline. But I can't fathom why seemingly no effort has gone into monetizing a chronological timeline. Why is it'…

With chronological timelines you either "run out" of content (because you've already refreshed like 15 times this hour and read everything the people you follow have said), or you get buried in content you don't want (because you're following people for hairdressing tips and they're all tweeting 20-page threads about why Putin is actually in the right somehow). Eventually you burn out and churn out. With algorithmic…

> Hence, you stay on longer and view more ads.

Jokes on them. I block every account that shows promoted tweets and it keeps my timeline ad-free.

I'm actually surprised they don't have promoted tweets override blocklists but hey, if it works.

Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#36

Post by wodenokoto »

anonymoushn wrote: post #32
slimsag wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's any issue monetizing a chronological timeline. The issue for them I imagine is retention: with chronological, it's likely that when you visit Twitter the first few messages you see are not interesting and you leave. But if they put a tweet that's popular among your social group in front of you? Odds are that's interesting to you and you stick around a bit longer. I dislike that, to be clear, but…

Hotels can try boosting user retention, as measured by minutes spent in the room, by hiding guests' belongings while they are away.

That's pretty much the thinking behind layouts of malls and grocery stores.

Grocery stores put common items like milk way in the back, in order to have you traverse the whole store and get exposed to as many meters of shelf as possible. They generally also like to change placement of product, to make sure you don't learn the layout and get too efficient at navigating.

Malls try to balance enabling people to find what they are looking for, but also make sure they don't find it too easily so that people can wonder about and be exposed to as many stores as possible.

If you enter the Dubai Mall from the metro, there's a big sign that points to the left and says "Food Court". You'd get to the food court much faster if you turn right.

Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#37

Post by zarzavat »

anonymoushn wrote: post #32
slimsag wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's any issue monetizing a chronological timeline. The issue for them I imagine is retention: with chronological, it's likely that when you visit Twitter the first few messages you see are not interesting and you leave. But if they put a tweet that's popular among your social group in front of you? Odds are that's interesting to you and you stick around a bit longer. I dislike that, to be clear, but…

Hotels can try boosting user retention, as measured by minutes spent in the room, by hiding guests' belongings while they are away.

Hotels don’t make money if you stay in the room, it actually costs them money in terms of electricity. But they do want you to spend money so they might indeed do things such as banning outside food deliveries or making the basin un-pluggable so that you can’t do your own laundry.

There was a case a few years ago where a Marriott got fined for blocking outside wifi.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/03/marriott-fin...

Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#39

Post by cpach »

amatecha wrote: post #13

If you want "Twitter" without ads, algorithmic feed manipulated by marketing, actual moderation, and actual community, I suggest joining a Mastodon[0] instance (and you probably already know people who are on the platform, making it easier to choose which instance ;)). It's kinda like using Twitter in 2007, but with way more features. For example, selective permissions per-"toot" ("followers only", or "unlisted" whic…

“Personally I’m closer every day to abandoning Twitter and just focusing solely on Mastodon.”

I did this and I don’t regret it.

Re: Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

#40

Post by ankit219 »

slimsag wrote: post #10
nkozyra wrote: post #8

They've been battling the widespread preference for chronological timeline for ... well, forever. As the common belief goes, the "algorithmic" one is more profitable. I buy this, intuitively, because it seems natural that it'd be harder to sneak in something jarring if you were viewing a more traditional timeline. But I can't fathom why seemingly no effort has gone into monetizing a chronological timeline. Why is it'…

I don't think there's any issue monetizing a chronological timeline. The issue for them I imagine is retention: with chronological, it's likely that when you visit Twitter the first few messages you see are not interesting and you leave. But if they put a tweet that's popular among your social group in front of you? Odds are that's interesting to you and you stick around a bit longer. I dislike that, to be clear, but…

With reverse chronological timeline, it's harder to build a advertising profile.

While it's important to know what tweets a user is interacting with, the personalization option can surface more things as "You might like", "You follow x, and he liked", "Interesting tweet on the topics you follow/might like" and so on. Whether or not you choose to interact with anyone or more of those is a signal, and helps with advertising (if advertising is a question of "What tweet/content you are likely to interact with?"). Other than brands, most twitter influencers, or would-be influencers end up spending money on twitter ads to gain followers.

With a reverse chronological timeline, it's hard to surface those tweets from outside the network without a jarring experience. They also realize the power of defaults and hence they decided to take away the default option.

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