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It's only now that I use Twitter on a daily basis that I realize the problem of having a single feed for your private life, work, hobbies, etc. It just doesn't

It's only now that I use Twitter on a daily basis that I realize the problem of having a single feed for your private life, work, hobbies, etc. It just doesn't work and is one of the main reasons why I unfollow people. I think the underlying functionality of circles and collections are a must but maybe they can be implemented in a better and easier to use way.

eitland 8y ago
When Twitter first appeared my guess was they'd create a kind of messaging backbone for the Internet and start to add features like machine-to-machine, group communication etc. Guess my disappointment.
edgarvaldes 8y ago
On a side note: Twitter is strange to me, as someone who visits it once every two or three weeks. After a while, I'm usually surprised by some tweets, because I started following someone because of their profession or hobby that lines up with mine, but then they post data about other activities. Why am I following someone who talks about food? Oh, right, for another completely unrelated reason. And I do not even follow so many people.
- josefresco 8y ago
  I have this happen as well, where I'll follow someone for a certain subject they post about, but then when they post about something else I'm confused as to why I'm following this person, until I look at their full feed and remember why. I doubt, even with the option that most people who separate their posts into "categories" or circles but it would be nice.
alttab 8y ago
I liked the idea of circles but G+ never really stuck for me. One thing I think about is tagging. Arguably circles is a private configuration. If I tag someone in a picture I posted to my Family Facebook Circle, but who on their end would see it on the timeline? I never used G+ enough to know how it handled that scenario. My intuition wants to tell me it's tricky things like that which piled up in Facebook's mind when evaluating whether to copy them. They've copied many competitors and social media outlets especially if it fit easily. Privacy features isn't one of their strengths.
neonhomer 8y ago
I find the issue is with the actual authors. One post will be something helpful to my work and then the next will some politic rant. I want a social network where I only see the former post.
- Ajedi32 8y ago
  That's what Google+'s collections were for: https://support.google.com/plus/answer/6320409?hl=en&ref_topic=6320387 https://support.google.com/plus/answer/6320409?hl=en&ref_top...
WorldMaker 8y ago
I find Mastodon's Content Warnings an interesting/useful model for mixing such content, and it's interesting the number of folks I follow that are falling into a "CW everything" philosophy for this sort of reason. The "Show More" to expand a subject/topic is an interesting "pull" mechanic, as contrasted to Circles' larger focus on "push".
- eitland 8y ago
  > I find Mastodon's Content Warnings an interesting/useful model for mixing such content, ... Same here. I also hope circles and collections will come to the fediverse. Pixelfed already had circles as one of four options for what to focus on in coming iterations.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  I don't mind CWs as much since they finally added a global "show all" setting you can set in your profile. There's definitely some nice uses beyond "trigger warnings", like keeping a long post from dominating your feed view, or as a spoiler tag for discussing movies.
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    Semi-related, my big hack in my instance's custom CSS was to substantially enlarge the Show More/Show Less buttons to make it a much easier target to tap/click, which makes it much easier to expand or recollapse a post.
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      This sounds handy. Out of curiosity, does Mastodon have any form of extension/plugin system yet, to allow you to manage these through upgrades and/or distribute them easily, or are you modifying the stylesheets directly?
      - WorldMaker 8y ago
        So far I've been sticking to things I can do purely in CSS (I wanted to move the CW subject lines into the buttons, for instance, but couldn't find a way with the current markup). For that, the Administrator section of Mastodon does keep and store a custom CSS section that it will output as a <style> block on page renders. I've been sharing my CSS changes on my account as I make them, and other admins could just copy and paste them. (Probably the most major other change was I fought the CSS to make the background 100% black for OLED power savings.) I'm told there also is a deeper theming system and some shared themes as Ruby gems. I haven't explored that personally because I'm using a shared host and so far I've been happy with the simple custom CSS overrides.
smacktoward 8y ago
I think of the underlying problem as "the metadata delusion." We programmers look at difficulties users have dealing with large volumes of data and think, aha! I can solve this by giving them ways to add metadata to those data, so it can be more easily browsed/filtered/faceted/whatever. (We think that because programmers have an analytical cast of mind, which we then extrapolate from -- this would be useful for me, we figure, therefore it would be useful for anyone.) So we build these elaborate systems for storing and managing metadata, and then build elaborate UIs to expose those systems to the user. Our system goes out to the users, and as long as those users are people like us -- analytical types -- it works OK. But then it goes out beyond that to a general audience, and suddenly we discover a new problem: namely that most users don't want to add metadata and simply will not do it, even if by doing so they could realize huge productivity gains. It doesn't matter how useful the metadata would be to them, to them adding metadata is work, and worse, it's nerd work of a kind they feel fundamentally uncomfortable with and unequipped to deal with. So they just don't do it. And they won't do it, no matter how hard you try to sell them on it. That was the problem with "circles" in G+: not that it was a bad idea to let people split up their feeds, but that having multiple feeds required them to add metadata (creating circles, naming them, adding people to them, periodically removing people from them, etc.), and people just didn't want to do that. So they didn't. It's not impossible to build systems that categorize data to make it more comprehensible, but if you want them to work, they have to do so in some way that doesn't put the burden on the user to keep everything correctly tagged/categorized/faceted/whatever. Because they just will not do that, no matter how many carrots you dangle.
- sethhochberg 8y ago
  It seems to be working for Instragram, but they implemented the simplest possible thing for stories - you can have your "everyone" group, or your "close friends" group. No custom labels, no additional groups, just those two and thats it. I see quite a few friends who never even participated on G+ or similar making use of it.
  - smacktoward 8y ago
    Yeah, that's a good example: if you must have the user add metadata, keep it as simple as you possibly can. "You have exactly two buckets, everything goes in one or in the other" is about as simple a metadata system as you can get.
fold_left 8y ago
An option that can achieve something like circles on Twitter is to not follow any accounts but instead assign them to Twitter's "lists". You can create lists for work, hobbies etc and view whichever one you're interested in at a given time.
pmarreck 8y ago
I divide things up thusly: Programming- or gaming-related: Twitter "Fit for mass consumption": Facebook Personal: Facebook (with privacy settings activated)

eitland 8y ago

When Twitter first appeared my guess was they'd create a kind of messaging backbone for the Internet and start to add features like machine-to-machine, group communication etc. Guess my disappointment.

edgarvaldes 8y ago

On a side note: Twitter is strange to me, as someone who visits it once every two or three weeks. After a while, I'm usually surprised by some tweets, because I started following someone because of their profession or hobby that lines up with mine, but then they post data about other activities. Why am I following someone who talks about food? Oh, right, for another completely unrelated reason. And I do not even follow so many people.

josefresco 8y ago
I have this happen as well, where I'll follow someone for a certain subject they post about, but then when they post about something else I'm confused as to why I'm following this person, until I look at their full feed and remember why. I doubt, even with the option that most people who separate their posts into "categories" or circles but it would be nice.

alttab 8y ago

I liked the idea of circles but G+ never really stuck for me. One thing I think about is tagging. Arguably circles is a private configuration. If I tag someone in a picture I posted to my Family Facebook Circle, but who on their end would see it on the timeline? I never used G+ enough to know how it handled that scenario. My intuition wants to tell me it's tricky things like that which piled up in Facebook's mind when evaluating whether to copy them. They've copied many competitors and social media outlets especially if it fit easily. Privacy features isn't one of their strengths.

neonhomer 8y ago

I find the issue is with the actual authors. One post will be something helpful to my work and then the next will some politic rant. I want a social network where I only see the former post.

Ajedi32 8y ago
That's what Google+'s collections were for: https://support.google.com/plus/answer/6320409?hl=en&ref_topic=6320387 https://support.google.com/plus/answer/6320409?hl=en&ref_top...

WorldMaker 8y ago

I find Mastodon's Content Warnings an interesting/useful model for mixing such content, and it's interesting the number of folks I follow that are falling into a "CW everything" philosophy for this sort of reason. The "Show More" to expand a subject/topic is an interesting "pull" mechanic, as contrasted to Circles' larger focus on "push".

eitland 8y ago
> I find Mastodon's Content Warnings an interesting/useful model for mixing such content, ... Same here. I also hope circles and collections will come to the fediverse. Pixelfed already had circles as one of four options for what to focus on in coming iterations.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
I don't mind CWs as much since they finally added a global "show all" setting you can set in your profile. There's definitely some nice uses beyond "trigger warnings", like keeping a long post from dominating your feed view, or as a spoiler tag for discussing movies.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  Semi-related, my big hack in my instance's custom CSS was to substantially enlarge the Show More/Show Less buttons to make it a much easier target to tap/click, which makes it much easier to expand or recollapse a post.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    This sounds handy. Out of curiosity, does Mastodon have any form of extension/plugin system yet, to allow you to manage these through upgrades and/or distribute them easily, or are you modifying the stylesheets directly?
    - WorldMaker 8y ago
      So far I've been sticking to things I can do purely in CSS (I wanted to move the CW subject lines into the buttons, for instance, but couldn't find a way with the current markup). For that, the Administrator section of Mastodon does keep and store a custom CSS section that it will output as a <style> block on page renders. I've been sharing my CSS changes on my account as I make them, and other admins could just copy and paste them. (Probably the most major other change was I fought the CSS to make the background 100% black for OLED power savings.) I'm told there also is a deeper theming system and some shared themes as Ruby gems. I haven't explored that personally because I'm using a shared host and so far I've been happy with the simple custom CSS overrides.

smacktoward 8y ago

I think of the underlying problem as "the metadata delusion." We programmers look at difficulties users have dealing with large volumes of data and think, aha! I can solve this by giving them ways to add metadata to those data, so it can be more easily browsed/filtered/faceted/whatever. (We think that because programmers have an analytical cast of mind, which we then extrapolate from -- this would be useful for me, we figure, therefore it would be useful for anyone.) So we build these elaborate systems for storing and managing metadata, and then build elaborate UIs to expose those systems to the user. Our system goes out to the users, and as long as those users are people like us -- analytical types -- it works OK. But then it goes out beyond that to a general audience, and suddenly we discover a new problem: namely that most users don't want to add metadata and simply will not do it, even if by doing so they could realize huge productivity gains. It doesn't matter how useful the metadata would be to them, to them adding metadata is work, and worse, it's nerd work of a kind they feel fundamentally uncomfortable with and unequipped to deal with. So they just don't do it. And they won't do it, no matter how hard you try to sell them on it. That was the problem with "circles" in G+: not that it was a bad idea to let people split up their feeds, but that having multiple feeds required them to add metadata (creating circles, naming them, adding people to them, periodically removing people from them, etc.), and people just didn't want to do that. So they didn't. It's not impossible to build systems that categorize data to make it more comprehensible, but if you want them to work, they have to do so in some way that doesn't put the burden on the user to keep everything correctly tagged/categorized/faceted/whatever. Because they just will not do that, no matter how many carrots you dangle.

sethhochberg 8y ago
It seems to be working for Instragram, but they implemented the simplest possible thing for stories - you can have your "everyone" group, or your "close friends" group. No custom labels, no additional groups, just those two and thats it. I see quite a few friends who never even participated on G+ or similar making use of it.
- smacktoward 8y ago
  Yeah, that's a good example: if you must have the user add metadata, keep it as simple as you possibly can. "You have exactly two buckets, everything goes in one or in the other" is about as simple a metadata system as you can get.

fold_left 8y ago

An option that can achieve something like circles on Twitter is to not follow any accounts but instead assign them to Twitter's "lists". You can create lists for work, hobbies etc and view whichever one you're interested in at a given time.

pmarreck 8y ago

I divide things up thusly: Programming- or gaming-related: Twitter "Fit for mass consumption": Facebook Personal: Facebook (with privacy settings activated)