I can't see this feature. Has it not rolled out to everyone yet?
Twitter's new timeline feature
81–90 of 135 posts
Re: Twitter's new timeline feature
#82As 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.)
It sounds to me like they are turning it on for everyone but still leaving the option in, so more people can try out the feature.
Right after that they said "If you don't, send your thoughts our way, and you can easily turn it off in settings."
Re: Twitter's new timeline feature
#83As if the timeline wasn't fucked up already. Why even call it that?
Re: Twitter's new timeline feature
#84I 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…
Wish they kept their Mac client in line with the Web version.
Re: Twitter's new timeline feature
#85Hang on... Didn't Jack Dorsey explicitly state that they weren't going to do this just a few days ago?[1] "We never planned to reorder timelines next week." I guess you could argue that the timeline isn't "reordered" since the top tweets will still be in reverse chronological order and then whatever comes afterwards will also be in chronological order, but that's still some seriously weasely language. I guess that ju…
Chronologically? How did you managed that?
Re: Twitter's new timeline feature
#86I 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…
The problem here is the assumption that the algorithm will do a half decent job at showing you important tweets.
Judging by the facebook algorithm, which is utterly terrible at showing important stuff, it seems unlikely. Just another step in the facebookification of twitter to appease short term oriented shareholders who rated the growth too highly.
It is already a mess, can't see how adding this will improve the situation. Opposite of the minimal, fast, realtime platform that so many flocked to in the first place. I'm close to deleting accounts for both.
Re: Twitter's new timeline feature
#87I 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 rea…
So if the problem with lists is that they require effort to maintain them, how about lists with algorithmic maintenance suggestions? People that are hands-off can leave it fully automatic, whereas others could still make use of suggestions to maintain their fine-tuned lists more easily.
Re: Twitter's new timeline feature
#88As 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…
On the other hand, I'm a casual user and nothing you've said matters to me. I think they're making (the reasonable) bet that there are more people like me than there are like you.
Re: Twitter's new timeline feature
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's perfect, I need to flip it on, just how things like this should be added to anything! I really don't have much of an opinion about the Twitter feature, but if a new feature appears in an app that is going to be beneficial to most users, making it off by default guarantees the vast majority of users will never see it.
> making it off by default guarantees the vast majority of users will never see it. Good point. I suppose if I'm looking at it as a user I want to be able to turn on new things myself. If I'm looking at it as a creator/developer I want people to use this new awesome thing I spent all this time and money creating that I think will improve things for them.
My point is if every new feature was off by default after several months/years of adding new features most users won't have them enabled and more than likely will have a worse experience overall. Turning on the new features by default but with a warning about them and an easy way to turn them off makes perfect sense to me.
Re: Twitter's new timeline feature
#90I 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 metho…
Well I'll say it then, you really should unfollow more people. To a point, the more you unfollow the better the signal to noise ratio improves. You just have to find that point.
It isn't crude or destructive at all because you will see those good quality tweets from people who are heavy users. You will see them when others who you still follow retweet the good ones. Your feed should be a solid mix of tweets you curated by following interesting people, and tweets those people curated for you by retweeting.
It can be a bit awkward to unfollow people you know because there is that social pressure to 'follow back' but this idea is worth it for the positive results.
To give a specific example, try unfollowing all local media outlets (newspaper, TV, radio) and instead follow one or two reporters whose feeds you find interesting. You will still see all the interesting local news and you avoid all the marketing and fluff that pollutes the media outlets' Twitter feeds.
I read every single Tweet in my feed every day and it only takes a few minutes. There is usually a ton of interesting and relevant stuff in there. I couldn't do this before, when I was following too many people.