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The social features were actually killed off before the product itself: a few years earlier they did a redesign which removed all of the social features. The so
by OskarS 6y ago
The social features were actually killed off before the product itself: a few years earlier they did a redesign which removed all of the social features. The social features were cool, I remember following a couple of journalists i really like who commented on the articles and discussed it with each other, it was a really nice thing.
The reason people are so bitter is that Google Reader was the kind of thing that if you liked it, it became part of your daily routine. It became the thing you checked in the morning over coffee, the thing you checked when you were procrastinating at work. Today that is social media, but Google Reader really felt like your own little curated space in a way (say) Twitter does not: with Twitter, you always feel at the mercy of The Algorithm. It also was essentially totally free of the toxic stuff you see on social media today.
They took this cool and personal service, ripped all social features out, did zero development on it for years, and then unceremoniously killed it in some insane attempt to make Google+ into the next Facebook. I'm still pissed about it, and it was the last time I've ever made myself rely on a Google Service like this.
- caoilte 6y agoYou can avoid content curation by only using Twitter with a unofficial client.
- hopesthoughts 6y agoyeah, I do this myself.
- basch 6y agoAs someone who prefers both chronological river (https://techmeme.com/river https://techmeme.com/river) AND a metric of popularity (upvotes) nothing beats https://hckrnews.com https://hckrnews.com. I wish that design was more common. Instead of having higher ranking posts climb to the top, a hotness bar and a popular bar to the left of links is ideal. The bigger the bars, the more activity an article is generating. Are there any feedreaders that I can use to 1) score but not rank articles, and 2) set a threshold to hide everything below a score 3) deduplicate stories from multiple sources, and aggregate+/average their scores together?
- jolux 6y agoTwitter still supports the chronological timeline. It's no Google Reader, but I refuse to submit to The Algorithm.
- TheRealDunkirk 6y agoYes, and how often are you having to switch it back? I've read several stories that Twitter will flip it back for you every couple of weeks.
- bosswipe 6y agoI remember this happening on Facebook but it hasn't happened to me on Twitter that I can remember. I've had the setting on for at least a couple years without issues.
- jolux 6y agoWeirdly I feel like they used to switch me back to "Home" constantly but it doesn't seem to happen anymore. It only changes when I change it now.
- dwighttk 6y agoSeems to be the default if you log out and back in. Which I do a lot. But otherwise it (seems to) stick(s).
- jpindar 6y agoWhen using Tweetdeck, never. https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ If you like Tweetdeck you should try it with the browser extension Better Tweetdeck.
- krrrh 6y agoThe basic fact that it was a "reader" presumed that people would read the article before commenting, which made it so different from Twitter (and hacker news for that matter) where it seems the majority of people repost and comment based solely on the headline. Twitter was testing a feature recently that popped up a confirmation dialog asking if you had read the link you hadn't clicked on before you were able to retweet it.
- ecliptik 6y agoNewsblur has support for twitter feeds alongside RSS. You need to setup an API key for it and it's a bit hidden in the settings, but once setup it works really well for consuming (not participating in) feeds. Combined with the training features of Newsblur you can curate twitter feeds even more. Don't want to see re-tweets by a specific user, thumbs down. Don't want to see replies by another user, thumbs down. Want to percolate a specific keyword to the top, thumbs up. I don't think I've looked at my native twitter feed in months.
- 8note 6y ago"your own curated space" sounds like the problem. It's hard to inject paid for stories and ads in without making it unpersonal