
Show HN: Twiverse – Find Twitter users and get more followers - tcodina
https://twiverse.com
======
mckee1
This is a fantastic idea. Ignore the negativity, particularly from the "what
about the men" comments.

Super cool!

~~~
tcodina
Thank you! I try, but it upsets me people feel this way. I made the platform
to help users open their minds more, and it seems the people who should be
using it are just hating on it.

~~~
dang
As someone who has to deal with groups on the internet often (I'm a moderator
here), I know how upsetting that can feel. May I offer a tip? Try to remember
that the vast majority of the community isn't reacting this way. It's just
that most people don't comment.

When you post to HN or elsewhere on the internet, you're broadcasting to a
large crowd. Somebody somewhere is probably going to get triggered—that's just
statistics. But when it's a public forum, those are the ones who show up to
vent their spleen. So comment sections are weighted towards these sorts of
reactions, not because they represent the community, but because it's a self-
selecting, biased sample.

This leads to the community seeming a lot more negative than it is, which
sucks. The only solution I know of is to give more attention to the other data
you have: e.g. the upvotes, and any traffic to your site. That's a challenge,
because we're hard-wired to take personal communication more seriously, and
comments feel like personal communication (though really aren't).

~~~
tcodina
Thank you, I shall try to think more like this. Indeed I am focusing on a
minority here - I had great success either way with >700 users, >4K views and
$420 from supporters in just 1 day. I should be more grateful of that, instead
of focusing my energy on closed-minded people.

------
h43z
Following like-minded profiles and hope for a follow back is one way to
increase your audience. Another is to let your content speak for you.

To make this easier for the little guy I played with the thought of retweet
incentivization. This could start as simple as
[http://peepmore.43z.one](http://peepmore.43z.one) which I put together in an
afternoon. Would be interested to hear what others think if this model.

~~~
tcodina
This is interesting. I'll have a look. It reminds me of my platform to find
underrated content, also based on a point system (check out 5 links to submit
yours. After 50 clicks, your content is archived). It's
[https://exposure.cards](https://exposure.cards), if you're curious. Not sure
if Twitter is against these kinds of platforms though?

------
morajabi
This is awesome I've been telling Twitter to be aware of who they follow, now
it's a practical solution I can throw at them.

~~~
tcodina
Glad you find it useful, then again in this aspect the platform would likely
be lacking as it does not allow users to analyse the "diversity rate" of the
users they followed. It's certainly a future planned feature, when the
platform grows past its 600 users.

~~~
morajabi
So far people who checked the gender ratio of their followings (using one of
the existing solutions), were most likely surprised (that it's so biased).

Assuming that, I'll tell them to open their following list, unfollow some of
the group they're already following a lot, and follow more from Twiverse and
its categories, or if the category isn't there, follow intentionally
themselves.

it'll balance it up. That's the route I went and now I have a relatively good
mix. I can iterate again, and do that again, but this time using Twiverse.

------
elvinyung
Cool project!

One minor question, how much does becoming a patron affect rankings?

~~~
tcodina
Thank you! When you become a patron, your profile is displayed in a category
on the right sidebar and sticked on the top of every category. A patron user
reported an increase of twice her usual daily followers just today, if that
gives some reference of its performance. Unless you mean something else by the
rankings?

------
iamdave
I can easily see myself using this, going through twitter recently to prune
and replace some of the accounts I follow.

One suggestion if I might? I noticed some of the imagery didn't seem to
immediately 'grok' with their topics. For example "Sports" shows a photo of a
bicycle propped against a wall in what looks like someone's flat, while "Arts"
shows a photo of a basketball court, "Animation" showed a photography studio
and the "Comedy" topic has a group shot of business suit types (albeit in a
'silly' pose).

It was a little odd, definitely nothing that breaks the platform but it may
help 'discovery' to make images a bit less...ambiguous given the topic they're
related to? I think sports and my mind goes to team sports and not necessarily
riding a bike to work (the image looks like an average commuter bicycle versus
a racing bike) so maybe that's on me to make the mental adjustment when
assuming the connectedness of topics.

Otherwise, neat idea and service!

~~~
tcodina
Happy you see it being useful.

That's a valid suggestion. I pulled the images from Unsplash (free to use),
and needless to say, there's not really an endless assortment of pictures
there, so I did with what I found, sadly. It is definitely something to
improve upon, maybe I will get someone to do the photography for some of the
topics, or alternatively go for a design. In reality I am not exactly fond of
the execution of the categories - in the end they're sort of a filter, so I
could have simply created a "super-page" where you could have those interests
listed as filters, and could have found users sharing more than 1 category. On
top of that, currently the platform has a fixed amount of categories, and it
does not allow users to add themselves to any other interest, which is a bit
limiting and unfortunate. Because of that, in the future I might redo this
section entirely, which could help fix the issue you raised at the same time.

Thanks for the feedback!

~~~
iamdave
Ahh thank you for that bit of insight, I was wondering if you had gone through
the additional trouble of maybe pulling images from each respective topic via
hashtag and applied some sort of ML to decide what picture is displayed with
what category.

Definitely nothing wrong with the approach you've taken though (and if nothing
else, consider the above an idea if you do decide to rewrite that
functionality) if it helped ship the product more quickly, like I said-it
doesn't break functionality, just a passive observation that may help the user
experience later down the line.

Cheers :)

------
PascLeRasc
This is really interesting and I hope it does well! Are you considering
refining the domains at all, like say splitting development and technology
into machine learning, devops, webdev, etc?

~~~
tcodina
Thanks! It's something I have planned for when the platform is bigger in terms
of users. Currently it has 900 (close to 1K, insane for just 2 days!), so if I
split the categories more, many would be empty, making it difficult to find
users in general. On top of that, more categories means more work for the
users to select their desired categories. Overall it doesn't seem worth it for
me currently.

What are my future plans in this regard though? When the site gets past 1K
users, I will start brainstorming and developing a new way for users to select
their categories. Likely through a textbox vs multiple checkboxes, where
people could type the areas they are into and they would autocomplete. I'd
like to also let users suggest categories, eventually maybe even let them
create their own interests. Could be exciting!

------
karmakaze
Why is specifying gender, non-optional? I don't follow, or expect to be
followed based on gender but rather by content.

~~~
tcodina
You can put "Other" if you don't want to disclose it, but I understand the
sentiment. It could be understood as NB / Trans for example, and it could be
misleading. I'll keep that in mind for a future revision.

------
alexanderisora
Hi Toni. What is the tech stack behind Twiverse?

~~~
tcodina
I used PHP/HTML, CSS, Js (with jQuery) and MySQL for the database. The entire
platform is hosted in a DigitalOcean droplet and managed using ServerPilot's
free plan.

~~~
zachsnow
I love how “boring” this stack is; great job just shipping the damn thing!

~~~
tcodina
Thanks! Truth is I am not really a developer myself, I am actually a designer,
so my knowledge might be a bit limited in this aspect. I did want to develop
the website in ReactJs, but I ended up not doing it because initially it was a
1-week project I made to get accepted at a university (& it worked out), so I
went for the "easiest" way possible for me, which is also the quickest.

------
jhampac
Absolutely great idea. I saw this on Indie Hackers too. I have also played
with your Product Hunt previewer. Your work ethic and output has inspired me
to step my game up. Keep up the good work.

------
seapunk
How did you gather these Twitter users?

~~~
tcodina
As to be as compliant as possible, Twitter users have to connect their
accounts manually and select multiple data in regards to their interests,
gender identity, and much more, which is complemented by the data gathered
from the Twitter API (language, verification status, followers, following,
tweets, likes...).

------
DeusExMachina
To be a place to find users from "different backgrounds" it looks to me to
only show the political bias of the author.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the only sanctioned different background seems
to be "POC" (what does that even mean), "LGBTQ+" and "with disability".

The home page sports a "check 1.000 inspiring women" but not a "1.000
inspiring men". I guess only inspiring women are worth following.

But actually they don't even need to be inspiring, since they also have a
"random women" section. I thought propping up some people based solely on
their gender was sexist. I guess it's not when we do it for women.

Also, a fairly glaring omission in the topics seems to be religion. And I say
it as a non believer. It looks like non-religious people won't be allowed to
look for someone with a different background.

In the end, the site is yours, and you can of course list, or not list,
whomever you please. But the claim of discovering people from "different
backgrounds" seems to me disingenuous at best.

More accurate, given the current content, would be "a few, politically-
sanctioned backgrounds".

~~~
vertis
Well done on slamming the 18 yr olds first product. This is very clearly the
first release of a product and it is definitely targeting a slice of the
functionality, but that's just good sense right.

Get it out there for people to try and give feedback on.

I appreciate the effort and thinking that has gone into a product like this.

Sure there are a whole bunch of features that I would love to see added but
I'm sure that will come with time.

The fact that it targets PoC, LGBTQ+ and Women is a fantastic start. I
remember an article that went around on HN a while back that analyzed the
gender balance of twitter follows, and the results were not good.

Working on diversity in tech and on twitter and highlighting women over men is
not sexist, it's pushing the needle back in a direction that it needs to go
in.

Men are not default.

~~~
tcodina
Thank you. I have to admit though this is my 5th product this year, I'm on a
roll, so I do accept criticism - indeed though I felt that the parent comment
was just plain wrong in this case.

~~~
vertis
Oops, how presumptive of me.

------
matte_black
How “different” a person is has little to no influence on how good their
content is. Being “diverse” doesn’t make you great. Being _great_ makes you
great.

Instead of showing who people are upfront, show their tweets without their
identities attached, and let people follow based off of that. Anything else is
just a diversity virtue signal.

~~~
tcodina
Sounds fair. I don't like judging people by their physique and identity
indeed, and I think most people would agree with me on this. Taking this into
account, your point makes sense - why focus on showing different people based
on their identities entirely?

There's a couple reasons as to why I believe that it makes sense in the
platform. To begin with, the concept that started off this project 6 months
ago was simply to make women more present in people's following lists. This
was an entirely identity based project from that point, attempting to increase
& amplify the voices of a particular group. Needless to say, with a concept
set up & validated, I kept going in the same direction.

Secondly, while some of the filters of the platform are identity-based
(ethnicity, gender, LGBTQ...) I also implemented multiple based on their
background (low-income, migrants, language...) as well as based on their
interests. I plan on expanding this group further, as I find it extremely
valuable to better diversify our feeds. There is much more other than whether
someone is a man or a woman, a person of colour, or a person with
disabilities.

There is a third reason, one which I might not be too fond of, but thing is,
in order to achieve diversity, people tend to prefer going about it through
people, faces, and real identities. As a rather "private" and ambiguous person
online, I've noticed how hard it has been for me to have recognition or
validity, since all in all people can just judge me by my work and ideas. Had
I gone this path with the platform, it would have likely failed, and I could
have not contributed to solving this issue.

All in all, your idea is good in an ethical perspective, but when it comes to
its implementation, it's absolutely useless, unless you change people's
mindsets (very hard, specially because you also have to change some people's
mindsets in terms of diversity already...). Then again I will see if I can
implement something like this in the future, I think I might be able to figure
something out. Thanks for your insight!

~~~
matte_black
Your platform is not changing minds. It's reinforcing beliefs. Beliefs that
say who you follow is more important than what you follow.

If a _racist_ reads some amazing tweets they find interesting and later
discovers they were written by members of races they don't like, that could
change a mind.

If a diversity fanatic reads some great tweets and later discovers they were
_all_ from straight white males while the boring ones were from a _very_
diverse group of individuals, that could change a mind.

But if all you do is provide a way for diversity sensitive people to pad their
following lists with socially approved diverse individuals, you're not
changing anything. You're giving people a way to pat themselves on the back
and feel like they are doing their part. You're building new cliques and
organizing new armies for future social media wars.

~~~
tcodina
Okay, that last paragraph really got me, is that really what you think
diversity-concerned people think about diversity? Filling a quota, being
politically correct... I beg to differ. While it's true there's always the
kind of people who are part of a "hivemind" (there's those everywhere, blame
the media, trends and multiple other sources), most people are aware of the
true issue behind the topic - it's a matter of putting yourself in the shoes
of the minorities. The problem is simple, say you are a trans woman of colour,
from a low-income background & a migrant. Do you think their opinions are
taken seriously, they are socially accepted in general, people don't hold any
prejudices against them, and most importantly, they have a voice? Don't you
think that oftentimes, people who are not the "norm", come from backgrounds
different to yours or are simply of the other sex don't get as much value or
visibility as say, a white american man? Sure enough recent diversity efforts
have turned that around a bit, but I still think that for several groups,
almost nothing has changed. I strive to make lives better for everyone, and I
think that this issue in particular, were it solved, would help a lot the
underprivileged. What about their ideologies, their thoughts, what if they are
terrible people? This happens, but I still support allowing them to have a
"basic dignity" to work upon. Overall, I just seek equality, that is all.

~~~
matte_black
I think the diversity-conscious will look at a statistic such as "80% white
men, 20% everyone else" and see that as a problem to be corrected rather than
as the natural outcome of a complex series of events compounded throughout
many generations. Absolutely.

Straight white american males are so _boring_ , so _standard_ , so
_unremarkable_ in their appearances and their backgrounds that people can't
help but focus on what they are saying instead of who is saying it.

These diversity play's that highlight people's status as minorities inevitably
fail because they can't divorce who a person is from what they want to say. By
making us pay attention to who a person is and making us self-conscious about
who we follow and don't follow we ultimately distract ourselves from what
matters: content.

It would be incredibly grating if I had to be reminded someone was part of an
underrepresented group every time I interacted with them, to the point that I
would just stop interacting with them because of it.

 _Real_ diversity is not a conscious effort. I've seen it. A bunch of people
of different backgrounds come together, work on something, and go home, and no
one even realizes or comments how diverse the group is. Nor do they even care.
That would be weird. As weird as being in a conference room of white men and
blurting out "Hey guys! We're all straight white males!"

I'm curious what the impact on your site would be if you removed all language
of diversity and simply presented the people there as interesting people to
follow, not even giving the user a chance to realize you are over representing
minorities and playing into their guilt of following mostly straight white
males. Would your site still receive such acclaim, or would it fold like a
house of cards? We'll never know. You'll never know.

------
DeusExMachina
> I made the category for women after receiving a suggestion from a partner

You are still the one that made the decision to implement a one-sided feature,
though, so you considered it worth it.

> so I don't think you are so right to call me out on the supposed wrongdoing.

The "supposed wrongodoing" is highlighting only women in the home page, which
you do. It was not about not having other filters.

> Religion & political ideology were 2 filters I wanted to implement prior to
> launch but I did not fearing controversy

I wonder why you thought that providing only the categories that appeal only
to a minority of people [1] was going to not be controversial.

> the website's core concept is to find diverse users, as in minorities &
> underprivileged group

That is not stated anywhere. The home page says clearly: "Search for Twitter
users who share your interests and come from different backgrounds".

> men don't happen to be one of those groups

That is exactly the ideological bias I was calling out.

Men make the majority of

    
    
      * homeless people
      * suicides
      * people in prison (and get longer sentences for the same crimes)
      * work related deaths (and the majority of the workforce in dangerous job)
      * victims of violence and homicides
      * deaths in war
    

Women are overrepresented in college degrees, and are the majority in fields
like medicine, education, psychology, and the humanities.

The "pay gap" is a myth, since the difference in average earning is driven
mainly by life choices and not by discrimination. The same is true for the
lower percentage of women in tech.

The idea that men are a "privileged" category is just ideology, like anything
that prescribes a common characteristic to a broad group. And the idea that
"POC" think differently that "white people" is, frankly, racist.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-
majo...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-
dislike-political-correctness/572581/)

~~~
tcodina
I'm sorry, I find your comment pretty ridiculous in multiple aspects, and I'm
honestly surprised you truly feel this way about the platform.

What I understand from it, and the parent comment, is that you're simply stuck
in the beliefs of "diversity has ruined men", men have it worse, etc.
Unfortunately I might not be able to change your mind, but I hope you
understand that the idea of the website was to make groups that were less easy
to be found on Twitter (I'll ask, how many women, people of colour, LGBTQ+,
people with disabilities and many other groups do you follow? Going to take
the risk and say that not as many as men, by a big margin...).

If that upsets you that's unfortunate, I am grateful for the people who were
happy with the platform and sent me awesome positive comments. If you want to
have a men-centric platform, you may make it yourself, go ahead. It's ironic
how you seem to be the kind of person who would have benefited from such a
website, getting you out of an echo chamber and seeing multiple perspectives.

~~~
DeusExMachina
> What I understand from it, and the parent comment, is that you're simply
> stuck in the beliefs of "diversity has ruined men", men have it worse, etc

No, don't put in my mouth words I never said.

I never said "diversity has ruined men". There is nothing in what I write that
is even close to that. That's even a meaningless sentence for what I am
concerned.

I also didn't say that men have it worse. They don't.

You are the one claming that women have it worse. They don't.

Some people have it worse, and they happen to be men and women. Some people
have it better, and they also happen to be in both categories. So do people
that face discrimination.

I am simply refuting is your claim that women are "underpriviledged". That is
not true in any measurable way.

> If you want to have a men-centric platform

I don't. Where did I say that?

I only said that you provide narrow, politically-correct categories. The
opposite of that is not reversing them and privilege another group. The
opposite of that is to give everyone equal treatment, which you don't.

> I'll ask, how many women, people of colour, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities
> and many other groups do you follow?

Why should that even matter? Do you want to follow more women? Great, go on.
Do you want to make a site for people that want to follow your specifically
discriminatory categories? Please, have a go. But don't claim it's something
else.

The ratio between the men and women I follow on Twitter, for what matters
(which is 0) is pretty even. I follow them because they are individuials that
have something interesting to say, not because of their gender or their skin
color.

Why should I follow more (or less) people of color? Do you think they are
different from white people? Do they all think the same to justify me
following them just based on their skin color? Isn't that racist?

LGBTQ+ people and disabled people are a small percentage of the overall
population. Why do you think they should have a higher number in the people I
follow? And again, do they think differently from people not in those groups?

You can discriminate all you want, but you can't seat on the side of the
"underrepresented".

~~~
komali2
>You are the one claming that women have it worse. They don't.

I don't see anybody arguing this. The most popular Twitter accounts are of
white men, so someone built a tool to find the Twitter feeds of not white men.

By definition the app is to help find underrepresented people (on Twitter).

I'll be honest, your comment comes off as extraordinarily angry for what we're
talking about here (someone made an app to help showcase certain minority
Twitter accounts). Nobody's suggested the United States Constitution should be
rewritten. Nobody's made value statements. So where's all this (I'm seeing)
anger coming from?

~~~
sk4rekr0w
FWIW - that's factually untrue, white men are actually a minority of the
largest twitter accounts: [https://friendorfollow.com/twitter/most-
followers/](https://friendorfollow.com/twitter/most-followers/).

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with showcasing accounts from
underrepresented groups in technology or otherwise. The anger comes from being
able to claim what is and what isn't diversity.

Women / people of color are underrepresented on executive management and
boards of directors in tech. Guess what? So are Republicans... even moreso
than the former. But diversity, as politically defined, only seeks to help the
former.

That said, to the OP, great site, great design, and great video.

~~~
glhaynes
_white men are actually a minority of the largest twitter accounts_

Sure, but those are all celebrities. People who get on Twitter and follow
mostly celebrities don't need this tool. But if your Twitter interest is
mostly about an area of, say, software development and you start following
popular people who tweet about it, you’re likely to end up following 90% (made
up number) white men unless you go out of your way to prevent it.

------
DeusExMachina
What if the person that needs to open her mind is you in this case? Did it
occur to you that that might be also a possibility?

~~~
dang
You already made your point at length and with considerable energy, I would
even say aggression, elsewhere in the thread. Now you're hounding someone.
That's not cool. Please stop now.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18522177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18522177)
and marked it off-topic.

------
dna_polymerase
By default the Bio is collapsed. So I am supposed to follow people because of
their gender, sexual orientation or disability, in order to have a more
diverse Twitter feed?

That is some major virtue signalling right there. If that is how you define
diversity for yourself you are mistaken. I can surround myself with 50 POC and
20 LGBTQ+ people and still gain no diversity of thoughts.

IMHO it would be far better if you handpicked people, asked them questions
(short interview via Twitter) and then portrayed their profile on your
website. Of course you should select users by some algorithm that optimally
doesn't adhere to your pretty obvious political bias.

~~~
komali2
>I can surround myself with 50 POC and 20 LGBTQ+ people and still gain no
diversity of thoughts.

If you only ever follow one certain demographic, this tool could be useful to
find some other demographics to mix in. You may not get difference of, say,
political opinions, but you will absolutely get different _perspective_ on
things.

Wanting to have gay people on your Twitter, specifically, doesn't nullify the
fact that there's diversity amongst white males. Nobody's community is being
threatened by this app. It's just a way to mix it up.

