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What Twitter Can Be

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Re: What Twitter Can Be

#81

Post by mountaineer »

nicolewhite wrote: post #62
kin wrote: post #33

At first Twitter was awesome because of their API but then that closed off so now I have to use their stuff only I feel as if they haven't done anything in the past few years but scale. I've tried being a user for years but they really need a better way to manage and view lists. The frequency of celebrity tweets vs. friend tweets vs. company tweets is all different. How I ingest that content is differs depending on m…

What is it about Twitter's list manager that doesn't address this issue for you?

It sounds like the effort of keeping the lists updated and current to provide that separation. It is possible to consume Twitter in this way, but perhaps not worth the effort of keeping the lists updated, you've really got to work at it?

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#82

Post by throw_it_away »

Honest question: I've tried Twitter a bunch of times, tried to engage with it for a couple weeks, then given up when I felt that either the tweets were not curated enough for me or that nobody was listening to me. Is there some guide for technically literate people to start using Twitter effectively? Right now I use Feedly and blogs to serve this purpose, but the appeal of real time news a la Twitter seems quite sweet, if only I could tap into it.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#83

Post by Torgo »

brador wrote: post #24
themagician wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tried that. It didn't stick. You have to remember that in the early days Twitter and a log of competition. Jaiku, Pownce, Google Buzz, FriendFeed, etc.. Then you had the open source versions: Laconi.ca, Status.net, Friendi.ca, GNU Social, Twister, etc.. Say what you will about Twitter, but it's the only thing that ever got traction or had any sticking power.

How did Twitter get traction and sticking power where the others failed? What was it doing differently?

I think it's because they iterated really fast on new features, and presumably stayed with what was popular. Original Twitter isn't even all that close to what Twitter is today. gnusocial is playing catchup featurewise, moves much slower, and frankly the default theme is really ugly.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#84

Post by firasd »

This is a great essay (and shows that even if it’s predictable, it’s always good to balance criticism with praise, support, and a sense of a positive path forward.)

As for Sacca’s suggestions, I have mixed feelings on the specific features he suggests for encouraging people to Tweet more (“Tweeting Shouldn’t Be So Scary”) and increasing engagement (“Using Twitter Doesn’t Need To Feel As Lonely”) but I like his suggestions about improving the timeline:

“Live Is The Biggest Opportunity Yet.”

This is the section he describes most lucidly and is the simplest to implement on top of the existing product. It’s currently done in a ham-​fisted way—where I am in India it prods me with modal dialogs about cricket matches!—but there will need to be less prodding if it’s built as a standard set of pages where you can follow the best tweets for a sporting event, TV show or news topic while the situation is ongoing even if you’re logged out. It’s a bit like following a hashtag, with some curation and highlighting of popular tweets on the topic thrown in.

“Channels Will Make Twitter Easy, Easy, Easy.”

I sort of lost the thread in the middle of reading this in terms of figuring out exactly how this is different from Live or other category based curated tweets but I kinda get it. These are his examples: “Want to know what are the most popular articles linked to on Twitter? That should be a channel. What are the most popular sites linked among the people we follow or people that our friends follow? Great channel. Which books are people Tweeting about? Channel. Which videos are garnering the most attention? Channel. Any particular .gifs blowing up? Channel.”

“Twitter’s Save Button Would Let You Keep All The Good Stuff.”

This is a relatively complex concept and would be difficult to implement in a clear way but I like the idea. “We could keep every product we saw mentioned, every book that looked interesting, every destination we wanted to visit someday, every concert we wanted to go see, and every ad that piqued our curiosity. All of this could be saved to a Vault within Twitter with just one button in line with the RT and Fav buttons in each Tweet.”

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#85

Post by mountaineer »

minthd wrote: post #52
azazo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this as the biggest problem with Twitter also. Twitter is my favorite app, but it's because I have spent five plus years curating my feed. There is a fundamental problem with the way they onboard new users and this is why so many people don't stick around. The onboarding process asks you to select interests and then recommends people to follow based on those interests. However, they often recommend celebrities…

That's true. Most of the recommendations are crap. Got any recommendations to finding high signal/noise users or lists ?

There are a few methods I've found for finding good lists.

1) Google with "site:twitter.com inurl:lists big data"

Google's listings are decent indicator of higher quality lists. Substitute whichever topic you are interested in.

2) Look at your sources' memberships. If there's someone on twitter you follow closely for a topic, check out their memberships to see who has already listed them for that topic and that list may be one to start with.

3) We have a list search you can try out and sort by various metrics to find higher signal lists

https://www.electoralhq.com/twitter-lists/search

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#86

Post by walterbell »

nicolewhite wrote: post #62
kin wrote: post #33

At first Twitter was awesome because of their API but then that closed off so now I have to use their stuff only I feel as if they haven't done anything in the past few years but scale. I've tried being a user for years but they really need a better way to manage and view lists. The frequency of celebrity tweets vs. friend tweets vs. company tweets is all different. How I ingest that content is differs depending on m…

What is it about Twitter's list manager that doesn't address this issue for you?

It does not exist on mobile?

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#88

Post by ThePhysicist »

MichaelGG wrote: post #78
ThePhysicist wrote: post #9

For me, the biggest problem with Twitter are their Draconian rules concerning third-party apps. I had several ideas for cool apps built on top of the Twitter API (e.g. a Twitter-based news aggregator, an online volunteering app, ...), but each time I gave up on the idea after reading the terms of their developer program: No showing of tweets with content from other social networks, no altering in the presentation of…

>No showing of tweets with content from other social networks Where does it say that? I've been working with folks and using products that do exactly that and they haven't had issues. Yes you have to display it like Twitter wants, but I've not seen any limit to also showing FB or other content.

Have a look at their Content Display Requirements (especially the section on "timeline integrity")

https://dev.twitter.com/overview/terms/display-requirements

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#89

Post by Torgo »

marssaxman wrote: post #5

Nothing in there about turning it into a decentralized open network instead of a proprietary service, so I will continue not to care about Twitter.

For the most part I try to ignore Twitter and its problems don't bother me, but one area that I can't avoid, that is a direct problem because of its centralized proprietary nature, is that now some people now provide a twitter handle in lieu of a plain old email address. Some people on twitter are even openly hostile to email because it isn't public.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#90

Post by lukasm »

> For most people, Twitter is too hard to use.

I don't know how to use twitter and I don't care. Why? Cognitive overhead. I use facebook messenger, whatsapp, HN, stackoverflow, github, Linkedin.

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