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This (and the original post[0]) sum up how I feel about Twitter. Every few months (since joining in 2009), I jump on and attempt to curate my feed to only get s

This (and the original post[0]) sum up how I feel about Twitter. Every few months (since joining in 2009), I jump on and attempt to curate my feed to only get stuff I care about. I stick around for a few weeks, then get overwhelmed by the deluge. So I constantly curate and trim and it all becomes very tiresome. I want Twitter to be a feed of news and opinions from organisations and people I care about, but it is far too hard to jump in and see how a conversation started or evolved. It is far too hard to filter out the noise. Honestly, my RSS feeds give me everything I need and they've been going strong for over 10 years. Sprinkle in a bit of Apple News to fill in the blanks and Twitter quickly finds itself in the "too hard" basket. The financial state of Twitter highlighted by this article is mind-blowing. How on earth have costs crept up so much with no meaningful improvement in product? As a very astute tech-savvy person, I cannot see anything that Twitter has done in years that have made it better. That stands in stark contrast to Facebook. I'm sad about this because Twitter has been such an integral part of the modern internet, in democratising information. It's role in the Arab Spring alone was world-changing. It's a pity it hasn't been able to harness this. [0]http://brontecapital.blogspot.ca/2016/10/some-comment-on-twitter-buyout-rumours.html http://brontecapital.blogspot.ca/2016/10/some-comment-on-twi...

digi_owl 10y ago
The Arab Spring thing is hyperbole to the hilt. If anything, Facebook and Twitter acted as pacifiers. While people could use them, they stayed inside rather than get involved in the streets. Only when the authorities cut the connection did shit hit the fan, as the masses ventured outside to keep up what was happening. Thinking about it, i suspect Twitter was an artifact of the US mobile market. It provided a way to do mass texts at a low cost. But as people moved to smartphones and push IM platforms, twitter's reason to exist kinda evaporated. On top of that they had basically handed the task of innovating over to third parties via their APIs. I still recall seeing people use Tweetdeck on desktop Windows with multiple columns set up on different topics, hashtags, and people during large events. This to allow them to track the full breath of what was happening at a glance. Crazy thing is that Twitter did integrate the "column" concept into their service, via lists. But neither their site nor their apps allow us to access those lists in any way similar to Tweetdeck. In contrast, most third party clients will support a column view these days.
- calinet6 10y ago
  a) twitter's reason to exist is as a communication system where the primary mode is individual > public, in short form. No other communication platform exists that has those characteristics. The web is the next closest thing, but the upstart costs and knowledge required to present information on the web are greater, and the expertise needed to make your content discoverable (SEO) is higher. Blogging services get close as well, but I think the short form is important because it both decreases the barrier to entry (simplicity and low threshold), and democratizes the communication itself—my tweet looks the same and has the same limits and capabilities as CNN's tweet, or the POTUS's tweet. There's something to that. However, it takes far too long to really understand the value of the service—took me several years before I really "got" it and my curated feed was something I actually enjoyed reading and participating in. Third, I don't believe twitter understands the value I described above. They've made no meaningful progress in line with that value in their product that would indicate they understand it or are interested in increasing the value, or even preserving it. b) Twitter acquired Tweetdeck, to their credit, and it still works for exactly what you describe. They really should have innovated on lists more in the actual product, though, completely agree.
  - simonswords82 10y ago
    > However, it takes far too long to really understand the value of the service—took me several years before I really "got" it and my curated feed was something I actually enjoyed reading and participating in. This for me, as I've mentioned before on HN, is the main reason that Twitter is a terrible service and losing so much money. The users (especially new users) have to invest far too much of their own time curating their feed in order to make the information Twitter provides enjoyable/useful, hell, perhaps even fun. Contrast this with Reddit, Facebook or any other social media platform. The heavy lifting is done for you. You create an account and a large amount of interesting, neatly categorised and useful information is curated for you according to your tastes. These websites are instantly sticky, and keep their users coming back for more. If Twitter can't get something as straightforward as a fucking onboarding user experience right, I dread to think what else lives under the hood that is a festering pile of dog shit. Add to this that a large amount of the Tweets being generated these days are automated and you've basically got a platform of bots talking to one another, with no value for us humans who aren't prepared to spend half a day curating their twitter feed. Very soon Jack and his shareholders are going to own 100% of nothing unless some drastic changes are made to the Twitter platform.
firasd 10y ago
Regarding the original piece, I felt it's a mistake for the writer to go, 'well I used the timeline years ago and the timeline looks the same in 2016.' They built out a major advertising and metrics system in the meantime that's keeping them afloat with billions of dollars. That said, their product execution has definitely been lacking to say the least. There seems to be some sort of mis-management that is aborting a lot of products and work they're doing internally. For example, the new 'user curated Moments' thing is a good step but they had exactly that feature, called something like custom timelines or collections, many years ago but let it languish. The new algorithmic timeline is exactly similar in some respects to their Discover tab from many years ago. It seems like the product ideas and engineering talent is there, but something's slowing them down... I would say maybe it's 'too many execs' but then without those execs building relationships maybe we wouldn't see so many Tweets on TV and have governments all over the world using Twitter. It's all very complicated, but yes the gist does seem to be "there are more people at the company than needed."
gjolund 10y ago
Twitters role in the Arab Spring and its new(ish) Saudi investors are not a coincidence.
awjr 10y ago
As somebody that actively campaigns for better cycle infrastructure in the UK, twitter has been phenomenally valuable, enabling me to establish connections with thought leaders in the UK and even, more vitally, from around the world. It has also enabled the communication of my own ideas nationally. Particularly this https://cyclebath.org.uk/map/ https://cyclebath.org.uk/map/ which has resulted in myself being asked to do workshops at conferences. More importantly, twitter has evolved my thinking on urban design, housing developments, road design, and active travel/transport and am considered a bit of an 'expert' locally. I'm now looking at standing in local elections to become a councillor, with the ambition of becoming Cabinet Member for Transport and I am aware I am standing in a big echo chamber and have crafted my twitter account to facilitate expanding my thinking in areas that I have a passion for. Once in a while, I even tweet a picture of cats. https://twitter.com/awjre https://twitter.com/awjre
- calinet6 10y ago
  Yeah, that's one of the major benefits—it really can bring people together around specific topics, and democratizes and enables communication between people of all levels. I've connected with and formed relationships with experts via twitter to the point where we've met at conferences or talks and been able to strike up a conversation based on our latest twitter discussion; they knew who I was and were interested in talking to me. Not sure how I would have done that otherwise. You're right it's an echo chamber, but echo chambers can help you be heard...
  - talmand 10y ago
    But not necessarily heard by people outside the echo chamber.
    - calinet6 10y ago
      That's okay, I wouldn't be heard by them anyway :-)
- jonsterling 10y ago
  Folks unironically using the term "thought leader" are one of the reasons people dislike Twitter...
Matthias247 10y ago
> That stands in stark contrast to Facebook. Although I agree that Facebook might have changed more than Twitter I'm wondering myself the same for them. I use Facebook since 2008 or so, and the changes/improvements were very marginally for me. The biggest thing was timeline (already long ago). Since then I only discovered minor stuff ( like "yay, after several years I can finally select emojis in the chat bar", self-playing videos, different like-types, after years finally another search field, ...), but nothing which really answers why Facebook needs that amount and growth of engineers from a pure user perspective.
matt4077 10y ago
What has worked well for me is creating constant churn in who you're following: follow anybody that you come across in retweets or suggestions if you think they might be interesting. Then be ruthless to unfollow anybody when you see the (1st or 2nd) tweet you don't care about.
- simonswords82 10y ago
  Sounds like a lot of work to me for little in the way of value. I don't understand why Twitter isn't doing more of this automatically for its users.
basch 10y ago
do you read any of the redef mixes? https://redef.com/channel/media/feed https://redef.com/channel/media/feed https://redef.com/channel/media/mix https://redef.com/channel/media/mix https://redef.com/channel/tech/feed https://redef.com/channel/tech/feed

digi_owl 10y ago

The Arab Spring thing is hyperbole to the hilt. If anything, Facebook and Twitter acted as pacifiers. While people could use them, they stayed inside rather than get involved in the streets. Only when the authorities cut the connection did shit hit the fan, as the masses ventured outside to keep up what was happening. Thinking about it, i suspect Twitter was an artifact of the US mobile market. It provided a way to do mass texts at a low cost. But as people moved to smartphones and push IM platforms, twitter's reason to exist kinda evaporated. On top of that they had basically handed the task of innovating over to third parties via their APIs. I still recall seeing people use Tweetdeck on desktop Windows with multiple columns set up on different topics, hashtags, and people during large events. This to allow them to track the full breath of what was happening at a glance. Crazy thing is that Twitter did integrate the "column" concept into their service, via lists. But neither their site nor their apps allow us to access those lists in any way similar to Tweetdeck. In contrast, most third party clients will support a column view these days.

calinet6 10y ago
a) twitter's reason to exist is as a communication system where the primary mode is individual > public, in short form. No other communication platform exists that has those characteristics. The web is the next closest thing, but the upstart costs and knowledge required to present information on the web are greater, and the expertise needed to make your content discoverable (SEO) is higher. Blogging services get close as well, but I think the short form is important because it both decreases the barrier to entry (simplicity and low threshold), and democratizes the communication itself—my tweet looks the same and has the same limits and capabilities as CNN's tweet, or the POTUS's tweet. There's something to that. However, it takes far too long to really understand the value of the service—took me several years before I really "got" it and my curated feed was something I actually enjoyed reading and participating in. Third, I don't believe twitter understands the value I described above. They've made no meaningful progress in line with that value in their product that would indicate they understand it or are interested in increasing the value, or even preserving it. b) Twitter acquired Tweetdeck, to their credit, and it still works for exactly what you describe. They really should have innovated on lists more in the actual product, though, completely agree.
- simonswords82 10y ago
  > However, it takes far too long to really understand the value of the service—took me several years before I really "got" it and my curated feed was something I actually enjoyed reading and participating in. This for me, as I've mentioned before on HN, is the main reason that Twitter is a terrible service and losing so much money. The users (especially new users) have to invest far too much of their own time curating their feed in order to make the information Twitter provides enjoyable/useful, hell, perhaps even fun. Contrast this with Reddit, Facebook or any other social media platform. The heavy lifting is done for you. You create an account and a large amount of interesting, neatly categorised and useful information is curated for you according to your tastes. These websites are instantly sticky, and keep their users coming back for more. If Twitter can't get something as straightforward as a fucking onboarding user experience right, I dread to think what else lives under the hood that is a festering pile of dog shit. Add to this that a large amount of the Tweets being generated these days are automated and you've basically got a platform of bots talking to one another, with no value for us humans who aren't prepared to spend half a day curating their twitter feed. Very soon Jack and his shareholders are going to own 100% of nothing unless some drastic changes are made to the Twitter platform.

firasd 10y ago

Regarding the original piece, I felt it's a mistake for the writer to go, 'well I used the timeline years ago and the timeline looks the same in 2016.' They built out a major advertising and metrics system in the meantime that's keeping them afloat with billions of dollars. That said, their product execution has definitely been lacking to say the least. There seems to be some sort of mis-management that is aborting a lot of products and work they're doing internally. For example, the new 'user curated Moments' thing is a good step but they had exactly that feature, called something like custom timelines or collections, many years ago but let it languish. The new algorithmic timeline is exactly similar in some respects to their Discover tab from many years ago. It seems like the product ideas and engineering talent is there, but something's slowing them down... I would say maybe it's 'too many execs' but then without those execs building relationships maybe we wouldn't see so many Tweets on TV and have governments all over the world using Twitter. It's all very complicated, but yes the gist does seem to be "there are more people at the company than needed."

gjolund 10y ago

Twitters role in the Arab Spring and its new(ish) Saudi investors are not a coincidence.

awjr 10y ago

As somebody that actively campaigns for better cycle infrastructure in the UK, twitter has been phenomenally valuable, enabling me to establish connections with thought leaders in the UK and even, more vitally, from around the world. It has also enabled the communication of my own ideas nationally. Particularly this https://cyclebath.org.uk/map/ https://cyclebath.org.uk/map/ which has resulted in myself being asked to do workshops at conferences. More importantly, twitter has evolved my thinking on urban design, housing developments, road design, and active travel/transport and am considered a bit of an 'expert' locally. I'm now looking at standing in local elections to become a councillor, with the ambition of becoming Cabinet Member for Transport and I am aware I am standing in a big echo chamber and have crafted my twitter account to facilitate expanding my thinking in areas that I have a passion for. Once in a while, I even tweet a picture of cats. https://twitter.com/awjre https://twitter.com/awjre

calinet6 10y ago
Yeah, that's one of the major benefits—it really can bring people together around specific topics, and democratizes and enables communication between people of all levels. I've connected with and formed relationships with experts via twitter to the point where we've met at conferences or talks and been able to strike up a conversation based on our latest twitter discussion; they knew who I was and were interested in talking to me. Not sure how I would have done that otherwise. You're right it's an echo chamber, but echo chambers can help you be heard...
- talmand 10y ago
  But not necessarily heard by people outside the echo chamber.
  - calinet6 10y ago
    That's okay, I wouldn't be heard by them anyway :-)
jonsterling 10y ago
Folks unironically using the term "thought leader" are one of the reasons people dislike Twitter...

Matthias247 10y ago

> That stands in stark contrast to Facebook. Although I agree that Facebook might have changed more than Twitter I'm wondering myself the same for them. I use Facebook since 2008 or so, and the changes/improvements were very marginally for me. The biggest thing was timeline (already long ago). Since then I only discovered minor stuff ( like "yay, after several years I can finally select emojis in the chat bar", self-playing videos, different like-types, after years finally another search field, ...), but nothing which really answers why Facebook needs that amount and growth of engineers from a pure user perspective.

matt4077 10y ago

What has worked well for me is creating constant churn in who you're following: follow anybody that you come across in retweets or suggestions if you think they might be interesting. Then be ruthless to unfollow anybody when you see the (1st or 2nd) tweet you don't care about.

simonswords82 10y ago
Sounds like a lot of work to me for little in the way of value. I don't understand why Twitter isn't doing more of this automatically for its users.

basch 10y ago

do you read any of the redef mixes? https://redef.com/channel/media/feed https://redef.com/channel/media/feed https://redef.com/channel/media/mix https://redef.com/channel/media/mix https://redef.com/channel/tech/feed https://redef.com/channel/tech/feed