
Twitter's new timeline feature - r721
https://blog.twitter.com/2016/never-miss-important-tweets-from-people-you-follow
======
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!

~~~
coldpie
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.

~~~
yolesaber
That's what lists are for. I follow over 400 people but have them segmented
into lists and its never unmanageable for me.

~~~
davidpatrick
I feel like lists need more attention. It is such a pain to navigate to on
mobile. A lot of people don't even know they exist.

~~~
yolesaber
Agreed. Rather than dragging users kicking and screaming into an algorithmic
timeline, why not play up the strengths of features they already built?
Especially since lists allow you to target a user more directly - you can
analyze the accounts in the list and get a rough estimate of what the category
is - and could generate more revenue for them.

Twitter would be really really cool if you could have your lists and then
swipe through them like you do with the "Moments" feature (which is awful)

------
benten10
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 anyway. Once it becomes an
algorithmically-defined popularity contest, it gets very similar to Facebook,
something that most of die-hard twitter fans don't want this to be.

Yes, we think the 'algorithmic' feed is going to suck in terms of our streams,
but also that our tweets will get lost in all the celebrity noise. Twitter
_reallllyyy_ doesn't seem to get that aspect of the complaints. This is more
of a celeb-pandering move than to improve user experience.

So by _giving_ my followers the option only see popularly selected tweets,
you're already shutting them off me. Yeah, they may not always like my tweets,
but they would like to see them once in a while (as I will want them to).

To summarize: We (existing twitter users) had a contract, an expectation--
that our timelines were going to be chronological, and we would see
everything. Twitter is trying to change that, and changing our expectations
WHILE we are using it. My guess is, it thinks the 'network effect' makes it
too big to fail, and doing this will bring in more of the fb-crowd. By doing
this, it is alienating us those who were here for precisely 'not-like-fb'
features.

I am mad. Very mad. If this is made the default, this is going to be another
'google-killed-reader' rage.

~~~
alanh
> _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.)

~~~
ubercow
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."

------
lukewrites
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.

On the other hand, I have a number of lists, whose members I do not follow,
but whose members tweets I do want to see. I probably spend more time in these
lists than I do on my timeline. The lists are for specific types of
information ("must reads", "python", "humor"). The more focused (fewer people
in) the list, the more I value not missing the tweets.

The twitter app makes lists very inconvenient to get to, which is too bad. I
like the moments feature, but wind up using Tweetbot (or another alternative
app) because I want easy access to my lists.

~~~
snowwrestler
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.

~~~
infogulch
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.

~~~
argonaut
Still requires effort to maintain. You have to click to add friends. Take a
page from Facebook. It's now really hard to manage lists; they encourage you
to use automatically-generated lists, though. I'm sure they had reams of data
to support this (over the objections of vocal power users).

------
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?

~~~
benten10
Naah. As I mention in a comment elsewhere in the thread, this makes twitter
into more of a popularity contest from a 'creator' point of view. Right now,
you're pretty much guaranteed your friends will see your feed no matter what.
Once they opt-in, (and don't remember/bother to opt in me into their 'real'
feed) my voice is lost in the cacophony of other celebs. What this is
essentially doing is fragmenting the core twitter experience that most users
are currently in for, for a more fb-like feature. It matters to you even if
you don't opt in, because that changes how your friends see your tweets.

------
ponyous
> To check it out now, just go into the timeline section of your settings and
> choose 'Show me the best Tweets first'.

Am I the only one who can't find timeline section in settings?

[http://i.imgur.com/kKedYcn.png](http://i.imgur.com/kKedYcn.png)

~~~
jonknee
No. Perhaps they're rolling it out gradually.

------
anc84
Is that the annoying "While you were away" feature that I have been closing
several times a day in the past weeks? I would like to disable it forever but
there is no such option.

~~~
majewsky
I hate "While you were away" with a passion, especially the part where (on
mobile) after dismissing it, it asks you "Did you like this?", yet it can't
take a hint after the 20th "No".

~~~
pavel_lishin
I've come to suspect that it's asking me whether I liked the _tweets_ , not
the _feature_.

So every time I tell it "I hate this", it thinks I actually dislike the people
and tweets, which is actually the opposite.

~~~
sangnoir
> So every time I tell it "I hate this", it thinks I actually dislike the
> people and tweets, which is actually the opposite.

On the official android client, you can dismiss the second popup without
clicking on "I like this" or "I hate this" by clicking anywhere on the screen.
I'm not going to train your stupid robot for your stupid feature.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I've started doing this, but there's still the problem that those tweets that
it thinks I love ... seem to disappear from the timeline.

If I see a "you may have missed..." tweet that was sent an hour ago, if I
scroll down to that point in my time line, it's not there.

All I want is a fucking RSS feed of tweets, tbh, organized by date. Nothing
more, nothing less. Go ahead and cram it full of ads, like they've already
done - just don't try to fucking sort it for me.

~~~
sangnoir
> there's still the problem that those tweets that it thinks I love ... seem
> to disappear from the timeline

I had not noticed that! I always dismiss the "you may have missed" without
reading, it's quite insidious. It's time I changed clients

------
gdulli
It's diluting (and once the opt-in option goes away, removing) the important
and unique aspect of Twitter. There's no way that removing what makes Twitter
unique will make it a better or more successful product outside of the short
term.

"The Verge spoke to two users who have been testing the new timeline for a few
months. Neither particularly liked it. "I started to get used to it but I
still think that it is a terrible idea," Twitter user Robin Bonny told me. "It
tears conversations apart, and it's really confusing when some people have
been live-tweeting an event and those things get scattered all across my
timeline. It makes it extremely hard to follow events, and destroys one of the
core values of Twitter, in my opinion." Another user, Coady DiBiase, was only
slightly more positive. "It's definitely nice in terms of catching up on
things I might've missed, but it's a departure from the core idea of Twitter,
so overall it complicates things.""

[http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/6/10927874/twitter-
algorithmi...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/6/10927874/twitter-algorithmic-
timeline)

------
dexwiz
This will surely end up like Facebook's feed, full of sponsored content. I
wonder if Twitter would market this to individual users instead of just
companies. What to make sure all your friends see your Tweet? Then spend 1
Twitter Stamp. You can buy 50 Twitter Stampfor $5. You can market it as an
equivalent to a real stamp. You pay to ensure that your mail gets delivered,
right? Well now you can also pay for your Tweet to be delivered. When
information and communication is free, its only time an attention that is
scarce. So you should be selling that.

Its social media micro transactions. 95% of people would never use it, but
that 5% might use it a lot. But you have to make it transparent. You should
only push it to people who actively use it. If it gets pushed for every Tweet,
it will only highlight the system, which will destroy it.

~~~
Touche
> I wonder if Twitter would market this to individual users instead of just
> companies.

They won't, they don't want user's pennies. It's hyper growth or bust.

~~~
dexwiz
At 300 million active users (exact numbers debated), if even 1% paid $10 a
month for promoted Tweets, that's 30 million a month. That's not pennies. King
Games and Supercell (Clash of Clans), have shown that microtransactions are a
profitable enterprise when you abuse human reward systems. What better reward
to abuse than attention?

~~~
Touche
> That's not pennies.

To Twitter's shareholders, yes it is. You can make that much with just a few
large marketing deals, that's their end game.

------
jeffisabelle
> We've already seen that people who use this new feature tend to Retweet and
> Tweet more, creating more live commentary and conversations

I really don't like this trend. The same thing happened with facebook with
notifications. They looked at the data and figured that when people have
notifications they tend to open the app more. Then started to send tens of
unwanted notifications every day. (Which comes from eg. groups that I never
joined, or games etc.) Result: hard blocking notifications from the mobile OS
level.

I hope twitter doesn't follow the same path. (Actually they already do this at
some level with 'your friend x & y liked tweet z' notifications)

These retention things just kill the apps that I already love. But since the
trend is this way, it is probably working out for majority of people and not
for me.

~~~
distances
> Result: hard blocking notifications from the mobile OS level.

For me the result was uninstalling Facebook. The app was showing daily
notifications for people it thinks I could follow, with no options to disable
the feature.

This was fixed at some point, so I guess the user feedback got through.

~~~
tenpies
Ditto. The minute the official Twitter client started sending irrelevant
notifications I uninstalled and switched Twitter clients.

Interestingly enough one of their 5 things this quarter is going to be
"improved developer support". I wonder how they'll balance this with third-
party Twitter clients that intentionally filter out official marketing
efforts.

------
Jordrok
Hang 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 just goes to show how effective Twitter is as a medium for
expressing complex ideas...

[1][https://twitter.com/jack/status/696081566032723968](https://twitter.com/jack/status/696081566032723968)

~~~
maus42
Well, looks like it's opt-in at least for now, so probably your timeline will
not be reordered at all if you don't want to during this week.

------
chc4
People should check out GNU Social. Lots of people have migrated over to it
(quitter.se being the biggest instance) with the whole #RIPTwitter
controversy.

It's entirely open source, has a twitter-like frontend you can install, and is
federated across instances so even if one node starts with changes you don't
like you can switch to another one and still talk to the entire network.
quitter.se is moderated against hatespeech and nsfw...but other instances
aren't, with ones like freezepeach.xyz being explicitally _for_ freedom of
speech. And you can talk to anyone on any instance from anywhere.

~~~
dilap
The banner at the top say's "shitposter's and conservatives" might want to
check out other services.

Nice start.

The entire TOS is a marvel of blackwhite-style thinking.

Because "users who harass others" and "racism, sexism, ableism, homo- and
transphobia" are "in practice limitations of free speech," we get the
following, quite remarkable policy:

"Moderators can exclude users from appearing in the public timeline it at any
moment, without warning, permanently or temporarily. Consider it a privilege
to be published in the public timeline, not a right."

Wow! Such free speech!

~~~
chc4
Did you just completely ignore the other half of my post?

GNU Social is free speech. It is federated across servers. No one of the
instances can ban you from the network completely.

quitter.se /is not unmoderated and does not advertise as such/. It is one
instance in the GNU Social network. It can ban you for posting hatespeech, and
the owner (and the nonprofit company that it's under) has no obligation to
host people's vitriol if he doesn't want to.

I'm not going to try and defend quitter.se's terms of service because I don't
believe in them /nor are they relevant to the network on a whole/. Take it up
with @hannes2peer@quitter.se, but there's really no reason to when you can
host your own instance and just pretend his censorship doesn't happen.

It's more analogous to email than twitter: you can post to other email
servers. People from other email servers can post to you. But your email
server is free to kick you off or blacklist all emails from another one if it
wants to, while you can move to any other server if your host is being
abusive.

~~~
dilap
Sorry, I should have been more clear -- I was just commenting on quitter.se
specifically, not GNU Social as a whole.

------
ericzawo
Twitter used to be an amazing social network with ongoing conversation and
discourse but lately (The past two years) it's felt increasingly like the
anger megaphone. Not sure that's a culture they can stifle with algorithms but
I'm optimistic they do.

------
tedmiston
Am I the only one not seeing it in Settings on desktop?

> Under Content, look for Timeline and toggle the box next to Show me the best
> Tweets first to change the setting.

There are 4 subsections under Content for me: Country, Tweet media, Video
Tweets, and Your Twitter archive.

Edit: (U.S.)

~~~
abritishguy
Not the only one, I wonder if it is US only (I'm UK)

------
huskyr
What i have been doing for years to fix the 'missing important tweets'
problem: create a list with the most important people, and set that as your
main timeline. The official client doesn't have this feature, but third-party
clients like Tweetbot and Echofon do. Works for me.

I don't really understand why Twitter doesn't simply re-use an already working
mechanism (lists) that they have neglected for quite a while. Maybe they could
autofill a list with suggestions ("important people" or something) and present
that as an alternative timeline.

------
swang
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 mess and having to
scroll timelines for context is a huge time sink.

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

~~~
swang
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.

------
ryandrake
What the heck is an "important tweet?" Isn't that like a dry raindrop?

~~~
VLM
One someone paid to have promoted. Or is a part of a much larger
marketing/branding deal.

------
AlexWest
If twitter goes full algo I will stop using it just like I did Facebook as
soon as they stopped showing me everything in chronological order.

------
ebbv
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.

~~~
wiredfool
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.

------
davidpatrick
Screw the Facebook copycat. I want a quick filter by my lists. Right now I
only follow other deveopers, and have narrowed my usage of Twitter for that
one use case. When I start following more than one "circle", the feed is
overwhelming and I end up never looking at it.

I could even see a Moments section that is fed off people you follow.

------
Touche
> We've already seen that people who use this new feature tend to Retweet and
> Tweet more, creating more live commentary and conversations, which is great
> for everyone.

If that's true don't expect it to be hidden behind a setting for long.

------
Sujan
What about third party clients?

------
blakesterz
>> Here's how it works. You flip on the feature in your settings; then when
you open Twitter after being away for a while...

That's perfect, I need to flip it on, just how things like this should be
added to anything!

~~~
seanwilson
> 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.

~~~
blakesterz
> 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.

~~~
seanwilson
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.

------
Mithaldu
Does this also show tweets i've already seen in my list, or does this only
serve to show me tweets twice when i go to the main view?

Edit: Either i'm blind, or that setting isn't available everywhere yet.

------
bronlund
As if the timeline wasn't fucked up already. Why even call it that?

------
miseg
They do quite a good job at picking out the "best tweets" aleady for sending
weekly summary emails.

So having that selection of tweets in the UI is a good idea, I think.

------
Walark
Why not just adding a colon feature like tweetdeck, its way more efficient
than having an algorithm choosing what is relevant or less relevant for me

------
danols
So I am going to assume that they are not going to show me the same
'important' tweet more than once!?! Or I am going to loose my shit..

------
alpb
I can't see this feature. Has it not rolled out to everyone yet?

------
edoceo
Ha-ha, "important" tweets :)

------
inatreecrown
this feels half-arsed at best

