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> some places work great with infinite scrolling (twitter, serial comic strip viewers). I would contend that Twitter does not work great with infinite scrollin
by bhauer 7y ago
> some places work great with infinite scrolling (twitter, serial comic strip viewers).
I would contend that Twitter does not work great with infinite scrolling. In fact, I kept envisioning Twitter as I read the article. One of my biggest grievances with Twitter (shared with much of modern computing because multi-device computing doesn't have something like PAO [1], which would keep all my devices' views the same) is that I can't easily resume reading my Twitter stream between devices. I can't even easily navigate to "show me the stream at 11am today," which would be a viable workaround for multi-device views. If I want to find a last-read point, I just need to sit with my finger on the page down key until I see something familiar.
Ultimately, my user experience with infinite scrolling is simple: I give up and stop bothering to try to be thorough in my consumption of Twitter content. I wonder if Twitter has the necessary metrics to realize that infinite scroll can hurt engagement. I doubt it.
[1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao
- jonstaab 7y agoI'd contend Twitter's problem isn't infinite scrolling, it's eschewing chronological sorting in favor of algorithmic. There is no objective order to most content on twitter, so deep linking to a place in the feed is impossible, whether you use pagination or infinite scroll. Which is why infinite scroll works - it solves the problem of defining what page 2 even is. Not defending algirithmic sorting of course.