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Twitter's new timeline feature

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Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#71

Post by norea-armozel »

dilap wrote: post #45
evan_ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, explain how it's a limit of "free speech" to not be published. I had no idea the constitutional abuses The New York Times was subjecting me to by not running my Farscape episode recaps!

Who said anything about the US constitution or constitutional abuses? Within a platform (such as twitter or quitter), the platform-runner is analogous to the government. The TOS (analogous to laws in a traditional government) can choose to value free-speech, or not. What chafes me is the Orwellian language. To avoid "limitations of free speech," moderators can "exclude user's at any moment...without warning." Unless…

It's federated so they can't just ban you from their public stream on the website. It doesn't ban you from the entire network. It's why they link to the other sites for anyone not interested in being moderated.

In fact, I like this approach regardless of the tone the mods at quitter take since it means I can spin up my own instance and block their crap from my public feed if I'm not interested in Stalinist/Maoist hero worship. :)

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#72

Post by walterbell »

alanh wrote: post #69
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…

> If this is made the default It will be — the announcement says so. “Then we'll be turning on the feature for you in coming weeks — look out for a notification in your timeline.” (Emphasis mine. Delightful euphemism.)

Yikes, totally missed that bombshell underneath the helpful-vibe phrasing :(

No mention if this applies to lists.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#73

Post by rohitnair »

swang wrote: post #67

Here is something I want: Marc Andreessen wrote something about colonialism and India last night, and today he apologized for it. I didn't see the original tweet so how about using all the Twitter data scientists to help me figure out context? Assuming that he didn't delete it already. I guess what I want is when someone subtweets, to have a link to the tweet it's subtweeting about. Twitter's website is a functional…

In this case, he did delete the tweet soon after.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#74

Post by snowwrestler »

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…

> 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 anyway.

In my experience, as someone who follows a bunch of people but rarely tweets, this is wrong--at least for me.

When I'm online I usually scroll past a bunch of tweets without reading. There are certain accounts I know are noisy, and I just scan the engagement numbers to see which tweets are worth looking at.

Why do I do this? Because Twitter puts all the tweets in my feed. So to find the good stuff, I have to filter at high speed.

Often what I end up valuing, I find after the fact. It works like this--someone posts a great tweet. Over the next x hours, a bunch of other people reply, RT, MT, or quote tweet it. The original poster retweets some of those. I see that retweet. Now, to get the context, I need to do a bit of hunting to find the original tweet. My feeling is, well, maybe software could do that hunting for me.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#75

Post by SonicSoul »

thenduks wrote: post #46
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…

Have you considered using a client that doesn't stay scrolled all the way to the top (TweetBot has a toggle for "pin to top" for example)? I would find what you're describing pretty much a deal breaker in my use of twitter, so I use this feature and literally read every tweet from everyone I follow. When I open twitter (and it syncs between desktop/mobile), I'm at the same spot I was when I opened it last.

This seems to be the default in Twitter iOS app and I really like it as well. There's just a new tweets hover button that can be used to follow to the top. So long as they don't mess with this behavior I welcome new ways to find tweets . Just hope they don't turn it into Facebook wall type deal where nobody knows why they're seeing what they're seeing

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#76

Post by swang »

rohitnair wrote: post #73
swang wrote: post #67

Here is something I want: Marc Andreessen wrote something about colonialism and India last night, and today he apologized for it. I didn't see the original tweet so how about using all the Twitter data scientists to help me figure out context? Assuming that he didn't delete it already. I guess what I want is when someone subtweets, to have a link to the tweet it's subtweeting about. Twitter's website is a functional…

In this case, he did delete the tweet soon after.

Yeah I figured this out once I read the article about it on recode.

I am pretty sure a lot of twitter power users would freak out over this kind of feature. One that integrates something similar to moments, but within the context of your timeline.

But twitter is a global product so when I wake up in the morning in the USA and see something like that apology tweet. I don't want to have to dig to figure out what's going on.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#77

Post by snowwrestler »

lukewrites wrote: post #57

I think twitter would be better off embracing lists. I follow relatively few people because of the firehose effect. My attitude towards the people I follow is that I like seeing their tweets, but I don't really care if I miss them. News would be a good example of this. It's great to get news or sports tweets in the moment, but they're probably not tweets I'm going to go back through later to find out what happened. O…

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 real life.

Lists are only valuable if they are well-maintained. But maintainence takes time and attention, which are not always available. And once lists start to be compromised, even a little, then it will take even more time and attention to fix them. Which makes it even more unlikely they'll be fixed.

Obviously lists work for you, but it seems like they don't for most folks.

Re: Twitter's new timeline feature

#79

Post by exw »

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

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