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

21–30 of 135 posts

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#21

Post by DangerousPie »

I know I'm going against the grain here but I think a feature like this actually makes a lot of sense.

Maybe I am not as heavy a Twitter user as other people here, but I hate how easily I can miss important tweets if I just don't check my feed for a few hours. Since I am also on a different time zone than many people I follow, I end up having to catch up on hours of tweets every morning by scrolling down the page for ages. Otherwise, I can easily miss extremely relevant/interesting things.

If this feature allows me to quickly get an overview over the most interesting tweets (and I can turn it off when I am following the feed more closely) that's great!

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#23

Post by wiredfool »

ebbv wrote: post #17

This is a terrible change. Twitter has been trying this feature out for a long time and every time a sample of it has come up in my Timeline I Dismiss it and when they ask "Did you like this?" I said "No." The strength of Twitter is that the timeline is always current whenever I bring it up, and I can follow back in time clearly as I scroll through. Messing with that is a huge mistake.

What's the point of asking if I like something if every single time I say no, they ignore it.

But the one time I accidentally click on promote a tweet, I get ads for twitter in my stream and a followup email.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#24

Post by Amorymeltzer »

Maybe I'm reading this differently, but isn't this the perfect solution?

- If you want it, you can have it.

- If you don't, you aren't forced to.

- It's opt-in

This will probably be pilloried — as it appears to already be here — since I suspect the #RIPTwitter damage is already done, but this does sound like a reasonable compromise. New feature that might get more people using and engaging in the system but won't change anything for people who don't want it. How is this not a win-win?

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#25

Post by talideon »

DangerousPie wrote: post #21

I know I'm going against the grain here but I think a feature like this actually makes a lot of sense. Maybe I am not as heavy a Twitter user as other people here, but I hate how easily I can miss important tweets if I just don't check my feed for a few hours. Since I am also on a different time zone than many people I follow, I end up having to catch up on hours of tweets every morning by scrolling down the page for…

I don't think people care so much about the addition of anything so much as the lack of any possibility of permanently turning it off. At least in this case, it's optional, but the related 'stuff you might have missed' 'feature' isn't.

I personally really hate this kind of thing as it clutters up my feed, and it never gives anything I care about. The value of Twitter for me come from the reverse-chronological feed, not this kind of thing.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#26

Post by talideon »

Amorymeltzer wrote: post #24

Maybe I'm reading this differently, but isn't this the perfect solution? - If you want it, you can have it. - If you don't, you aren't forced to. - It's opt-in This will probably be pilloried — as it appears to already be here — since I suspect the #RIPTwitter damage is already done, but this does sound like a reasonable compromise. New feature that might get more people using and engaging in the system but won't cha…

It's a win-win if it means it replaces the 'stuff you might've missed' nonsense, which isn't opt-in.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#27

Post by coldpie »

DangerousPie wrote: post #21

I know I'm going against the grain here but I think a feature like this actually makes a lot of sense. Maybe I am not as heavy a Twitter user as other people here, but I hate how easily I can miss important tweets if I just don't check my feed for a few hours. Since I am also on a different time zone than many people I follow, I end up having to catch up on hours of tweets every morning by scrolling down the page for…

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.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#29

Post by majewsky »

coldpie wrote: post #27
DangerousPie wrote: post #21

I know I'm going against the grain here but I think a feature like this actually makes a lot of sense. Maybe I am not as heavy a Twitter user as other people here, but I hate how easily I can miss important tweets if I just don't check my feed for a few hours. Since I am also on a different time zone than many people I follow, I end up having to catch up on hours of tweets every morning by scrolling down the page for…

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.

Seconded. I regularly prune the list of accounts I follow, so that I don't spend too much time with Twitter but still get to read everything from those people that I find interesting.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#30

Post by tfgg »

DangerousPie wrote: post #21

I know I'm going against the grain here but I think a feature like this actually makes a lot of sense. Maybe I am not as heavy a Twitter user as other people here, but I hate how easily I can miss important tweets if I just don't check my feed for a few hours. Since I am also on a different time zone than many people I follow, I end up having to catch up on hours of tweets every morning by scrolling down the page for…

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 method to try to increase the quality of my feed. I still want to see good quality tweets from the people who tweet a bit too much. I appreciate that use case (follow just a few accounts and read every tweet) though and definitely think they should cater to it.

Post reply on HN