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Show HN: Kizie – Twitter for web, reimagined
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoHi fellow misfits, I'm Rishi(https://twitter.com/thelifeofrishi https://twitter.com/thelifeofrishi), I have been working on a better version of Twitter at https://kizie.co https://kizie.co, let me know what you think -- Tech Next.js, Vercel, Supabase, Tailwind, ah yep that's pretty much it -- Why? Because Twitter.com is cluttered, has ads that no one likes, lacks UX and can be better, Kizie.co intends to fix all of these. -- Whats' in Kizie.co that Twitter.com doesn't have? - Undo tweet, you get time to discard/re-send last sent tweet - Analytics, you get stats of your tweets so you know which tweets are working and to increase engagement - Quick media preview, preview photos/videos in feeds in full aspect ratio quickly on hover, Twitter.com is still trying to fix the issue :D - Reader mode for links, my personal favorite, links in your timeline can be viewed in a beautiful reader view in the app itself - Save links for later - Plus Kizie has almost all of the Twitter.com features - Me --- I'm the only one working on it, and so I assure you there can be bugs in the app :D, if you come across one just let me know on Twitter. I have been constantly using Kizie on Web and through macOS app since last couple months now and I think it's good and stable enough for daily use at this moment. I've been also constantly working on UX and adding useful features, currently a tool to convert Tweet to image - https://kizie.co/tweet-image https://kizie.co/tweet-image (standalone rn but will be available for Pro users and could be used from the feeds). Have bunch of ideas to go live :) That's it, let me know what you think of it!
- eigengrau5150 5y agoAll you're doing is putting lipstick on a pig. This isn't even a better Nitter <https://nitter.net/about https://nitter.net/about>. If you want to do something useful, I'd like to see you create a Twitter look-alike that pulls from members' RSS/Atom/JSON feeds rather than letting them post directly. No likes, no reshares, no comments. Just pure feed aggregation in reverse chronological order like the Demiurge intended. We need more webrings and sites like Nightfall City <https://nightfall.city/ https://nightfall.city/>, not FOSS developers reskinning a parasocial media site and not getting a dime in payment.
- croisillon 5y agoYou seem to be kind of shadowban (not sure what the proper term is), you might want to write an email to the hn moderation to clear that up
- eigengrau5150 5y agoI can't be bothered. If they want to censor me that's their prerogative. I'm not paying to shitpost here, and I'm not getting paid to be here either; I'm just a guest.
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoI know it's not as good as nitter(didn't know about it) But I'm trying :), I see nitter has 22 contributors, Kizie has only one person working, give me some time I'll make it as better as I can
- eigengrau5150 5y agoNo matter what you do, Kizie will be worthless as long as it depends on Twitter. Twitter is nothing but the men's room wall of the internet. Its content is nothing but variations on the following theme: Here I sit, brokenhearted / I came to shit and only farted
- selfer564 5y agoComments like yours are such a stain to the community. If you have nothing constructive to say, keep it to yourself.
- monetus 5y agoHow do you feel the engagement metrics will play out? They make me worried. Also, kudos for making this!
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoSince I haven't dived fully into it I am not sure how it'll turn out, my idea with engagement context is to show users what's working for them and whats' not so they know how to do it This will include maths and lots of data processing but it'll eventually be there in Kizie at some point
- barrenko 5y agoI'll try it, Twitter is impossible to browse sequentially.
- thelifeofrishi 5y agothanks :) If you have feedback please let me know via Twitter DM
- barrenko 5y agoSure, you can have my money just by making reading better e.g. - List of who I'm following is basically buried, if I had a couple of "balloons" at the top of the feed with top 5- 10 people I follow (according to some algorithm) and I can click then read, some sort of that would be swell. I don't care about the general feed, I care about insightful people, currently it's easier for me to do it via bookmarks of select profiles, that's my twitter client.
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoI've focussed on making reading experience better, try it out :) Your suggestion on tweets from insightful people is interesting, I can see Twitter lists can do that too, I'll think about it, thanks.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- paulcole 5y ago> a beautiful reader mode UI What do you think is beautiful about the UI? What other beautiful UIs inspired your design?
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoLess clutter, simple is beautiful I guess if I may say so as a maker But if you think it's not then sure please let me know your definition of "beautiful", I'll try to work on it :)
- barrenko 5y agoIt's cool and in fact "pretty", but I think you need some sort of visual "demarcation" between posts.
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoNoted, I've been feeling it too lately, will work on it :)
- Brajeshwar 5y agoHey Rishi, The Landing page was pretty blank (the twitter embed part) when NextDNS is enabled. I think any other AdBlockers will block it. You might want to check it out.
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoThanks for reporting, it doesn't use Twitter's script but the API data, thought what you're saying is possible If possible, can you please DM me the console screenshot at https:/twitter.com/thelifeofrishi
- p4bl0 5y agoI read the feature list and I don't really see anything that is not already on the standard twitter web ui. What are the actual addition feature-wise?
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoHi, Twitter.com doesn't have these, I literally checked like 20 seconds back :) - Undo tweet, you get time to discard/re-send last sent tweet - Analytics, you get stats of your tweets so you know which tweets are working and to increase engagement - Quick media preview, preview photos/videos in feeds in full aspect ratio quickly on hover, Twitter.com is still trying to fix the issue :D - Reader mode for links, my personal favorite, links in your timeline can be viewed in a beautiful reader view in the app itself - Save links for later
- p4bl0 5y agoOkay for undo/redo. I mean, I can delete and repost a tweet with correction, but the UI isn't made for that. However I have statistics on Twitter, for each tweet individually or for my timeline globally with top tweets per view/engagements etc per period of time. I think I understand better what you call "media preview", I guess that can be useful for some. The remaining features you listed are features that I want from my browser (which has them) not from the app, but that's also a matter of personal preferences I guess :).
- thelifeofrishi 5y ago- Undo/redo comment, I agree but Kizie makes it easier. - Statistics, twitter only shows per tweet, Kizie(makes it better) gives it all in single place, and its' going to have insights soon(per period, engagement data, which tweets worked etc.) Thanks, even if it solves some and not all problems I am happy with it. It's a continuous effort to add things and make existing stuff stable If there's something you've always wanted out of Twitter then let me know, would be happy to add :)
- 5y ago
- ageitgey 5y agoLooks like twitter isn't happy about all the users viewing your page: {"message":"Rate limit exceeded","code":88,"allErrors":[{"message":"Rate limit exceeded","code":88}],"twitterReply":{"errors":[{"message":"Rate limit exceeded","code":88}]},"statusCode":429}
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoThere's too much traffic on the site right now because of this post, it should be back in a couple of minutes :)
- unclebucknasty 5y agoHow will you manage this if you get widespread adoption/use?
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoActually it was an issue where I was making API request for the homepage for rendering some tweets, huge traffic caused the reach to limit, bad decision, it's fixed now :)
- unclebucknasty 5y agoI understand. I was assuming that you were also using the Twitter API for the product itself, such that rate-limiting would affect API requests at some point as you scale up your users.
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoSigned in users use user's keys so each user has it's own rate-limit separate from the app context. And yes, you're right, there are rate-limits for endpoints in Twitter API, I've optimized the app to be in rate-limits and still be able to make the most of it. For ex. I recently added Messages in Kizie. Twitter API's Messages endpoint has a rate-limit of 15 requests per 15 min window. Really really low for something like messages. On top of that each request returns at most 50 messages(not conversations). How Kizie handles it is it makes 3 requests on initial load and then checks for new messages every 2.5 minutes. It was kinda tricky to do all of it reliably and I'm still trying optimise it more for better experience :)
- Y-bar 5y agoI don't see anything about tools to deal with harassment and trolls. Any online platform, especially public or semi-public ones, will have to deal with it. I wonder what you have done.
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoThe only feature that'll help with this issue in Kizie is "Muted Words" but Twitter has that too. Thanks for pointing out the problem, the focus haven't been there but I see the problem, I've noted it and will plan for it. Thanks :)
- tasubotadas 5y agoWhile the people from the US or Japan might not agree, the only way to improve Twitter is to delete it.
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoI love Twitter
- blowski 5y agoThis is a bit of a HN cliche. Twitter can be great as long as you stay away from the toxic threads and you know when to switch off. I use it to banter about football and the like.
- eigengrau5150 5y agoTwitter is like the rest of Silicon Valley: there's nothing wrong with it that can't be fixed by doing things Ellen Ripley's way. (It's the only way to be sure.)
- adamrezich 5y agowhat context am I missing for mentioning Japan in this context?
- sebastianconcpt 5y agoHow is this platform making impossible to censor users guaranteeing freedom of expression?
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoThat wasn't in the roadmap till now, I'll think about it but it's little hard to achieve this since Twitter controls the data here :)
- satvikpendem 5y agoThis is just a frontend client for Twitter, that's like asking how a frontend client for Hacker News allows you to bypass dang and moderators; it doesn't.
- sebastianconcpt 5y agoThat's too in-the-box thinking in my mind. The product could use Twitter as a starting point of something and have things that can't be Twitter controlled by the platform itself. Namely, protect owned responses there that Twitter would be eager to censor. Being a microphone for those who were excluded.
- satvikpendem 5y agoHow would it do that? It uses the Twitter API, it's not its own service, it's a client.
- huhtenberg 5y agoI suspect it's not supposed to look like this - https://i.imgur.com/hX6YMgb.png https://i.imgur.com/hX6YMgb.png
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoIt's not, might be adblocker or Firefox strict setting.
- schleck8 5y agoI have this issue too, with Chrome on Android and a DNS adblocker. Might be the image host or it doesn't load for a different reason
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoCan you please try opening https://kizie/co/YOUR_TWITTER_HANDLE https://kizie/co/YOUR_TWITTER_HANDLE and report what you see, thanks in advance!
- robin_reala 5y agoAll images coming from Twitter are broken. Firefox is counting images coming from https://pbs.twimg.com/ https://pbs.twimg.com/ as trackers and stopping the load. This is with Enhanced Tracking Protection turned on. You can confirm this by clicking on the shield in the address bar, then clicking on Social Media Trackers.
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoYeah that's a known issue and happens on any app that used Twitter API when Firefox enhanced protection is enabled, it would work on balanced settings.
- DecoPerson 5y agoBlank in all cases for me. With adblocker enabled/disabled. With Dark Reader enabled/disabled. On the homepage vs /my_twitter_handle. In Chrome, Edge, Firefox. I'm in Australia. I see no errors in the developer console, or the network tab. Inspecting element reveals a bunch of divs, with no meaningful content (essentially empty) in the middle.
- superkuh 5y agoNope. It's about equal to modern twitter. All I get is a blank screen indicating you want me to execute untrusted code from your domain. Twitter at least tells me that it's blocking me intentionally for not running it's code though.
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoI'm an indie dev. who built this on weekends, 200 active visitors gets me excited, taking users data and selling it to someone doesn't :)
- superkuh 5y agoIt's not that I don't trust you specifically. I have no reason to monetize my interactions with you either but would you run an executable email attachment if I sent one to you? Please consider making a graceful fallback to an actual website even if it's only to tell non-JS users to go away.
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoMakes sense :)
- waspight 5y agoAre you comparing running a random exe file with executing javascript on the web?
- cheeaun 5y agoWould be useful for me if this supports lists.
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoLists is on plan, will be there in the next update :)
- cheeaun 5y agoThat would be cool :) Also, I feel like there seems to be a lag when clicking on the tabs. Currently using it on Mobile Safari iOS 15. Maybe I'm expecting native-like perf or something :D
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoThe thought of creating Kizie iOS app has crossed my mind like 23 times :D, someday
- danpalmer 5y agoThis looks great, solid list of features. I use Tweetbot and have done for many years, mostly because of a feature set like this. Is Kizie intending to compete with other third-party clients, or is it intending to target platforms like the web/Android where established apps like Tweetbot aren't available?
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoThanks! Kizie isn't intending to compete with any other app, it's intended to be user's Twitter app with flawless experience, if there's any feature that could possibly uplift your Twitter experience then I want to add that in Kizie, possibly on multiple platforms too :)
- pelasaco 5y agoThe edit feature, i think is problematic. Imagine you post something, X people liked it, then you edit the post changing the whole meaning of the message and the people that liked it before changes are still be there.. liking it. That's problematic IMO, when people get canceled because they liked something on Twitter, that they actually didn't.
- XIVMagnus 5y agoI guess this is why twitter doesn't allow edits. I never thought about it this way.
- blowski 5y agoI believe Twitter also relies on read only Tweets as a performance optimisation.
- danpalmer 5y agoTwitter do not allow editing in their API, so all this app is doing is _not posting it_ for a short period of time after you click submit to allow you to edit if you need to. No one will see the tweet until that time period is over.
- pelasaco 5y agoDid you get this information from: "Undo or redo a tweet Discard your last tweet or re-edit it, quickly with shortcuts" or are you just guessing it based on the twitter API?
- danpalmer 5y agoNeither, it's just fairly clear to me that this is not the sort of feature that a third party client to a service can typically implement if there is no support for it in the official client (completely separate from this being Twitter). As another example, Gmail has an "undo" button on sending an email, but other email clients don't (mostly). Why? Because email doesn't have the concept of un-doing a send, so the only way they can implement this at the "protocol level" is to... not, and to implement it entirely in the client with a delay.
- emptyparadise 5y agoI hope Twitter won't ruin this.
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoThat's one of the best things I've heard about Kizie :)
- sergiotapia 5y agoIt takes balls to launch something that depends 100% on Twitter. What's to stop them from cutting you off at whatever whim they have?
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoI was prepared for that even before I started work on Kizie, nothing to lose :)
- waspight 5y agoIs this a one man project? How did you go about design? Existing component library of some sort?
- thelifeofrishi 5y agoYes, solo founder. I am also a designer :), all custom components based on Tailwind