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Is that actually possible on Twitter? (I have an account but don't use it.) I do believe them that when a user follows several 100+ other users, it would probab

Is that actually possible on Twitter? (I have an account but don't use it.) I do believe them that when a user follows several 100+ other users, it would probably be impossible to read every tweet chronologically.

ironmagma 5y ago
Impossible to read, maybe. Impossible to display, definitely not.
madeofpalk 5y ago
Yes. It is. It's been an option since... forever? Many many years at least. https://i.imgur.com/JM6saa2.png https://i.imgur.com/JM6saa2.png For about a week they made a change that prevent that chronological timeline from being the default, but they reasonably quickly rolled that back. https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/14/22977782/twitter-default-home-algorithmic-timeline-feed-reverse-chronological https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/14/22977782/twitter-default-...
themanmaran 5y ago
Sort by recent is an available setting. Whether you can keep up with the volume is up to how many people you choose to follow.
dilap 5y ago
i always use chronological, atm following very few people, but in the past following too many to keep up w/. even when following too many to read everything, i preferred chrono because it would yield a coherent slice of what was happening. an unbiased sample. twitter is basically a medium for conversation. imagine there's a large party. would you rather listen to an out-of-order "most important" set parts of the conversation, or just a slice of conversation from a particular time? well, actually, both can be interesting, but generally the slice is more coherent. :-)
almog 5y ago
Assuming we're talking about the timeline "latest" mode (rather than "top"), IIRC in the past the used to do the home timeline processing on the read paths, but have long since opted to optimize for read latency, thus the heavy lifting is performed during the insertion, so in broad strokes, when someone post a tweet, the three main things that happen are: 1. Insertion of tweet to tweets table. 2. Insertion of that tweet-id to the home timelines of all that user's followers. 3. Insertion of that tweet-id to the user-timeline of that user. On the read-path, if I'm not mistaken, the only join that happen is between the requested timeline and the tweets table (which is replicated across cluster of machines but not partitioned, or at least I remember reading that was the case not many years ago)
lysp 5y ago
I use lists by subject matter, including a list of personal contacts. I then use tweet deck which shows a column of tweets per list. As these are separated by subject and are chronological, it makes it far easier to follow.

ironmagma 5y ago

Impossible to read, maybe. Impossible to display, definitely not.

madeofpalk 5y ago

Yes. It is. It's been an option since... forever? Many many years at least. https://i.imgur.com/JM6saa2.png https://i.imgur.com/JM6saa2.png For about a week they made a change that prevent that chronological timeline from being the default, but they reasonably quickly rolled that back. https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/14/22977782/twitter-default-home-algorithmic-timeline-feed-reverse-chronological https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/14/22977782/twitter-default-...

themanmaran 5y ago

Sort by recent is an available setting. Whether you can keep up with the volume is up to how many people you choose to follow.

dilap 5y ago

i always use chronological, atm following very few people, but in the past following too many to keep up w/. even when following too many to read everything, i preferred chrono because it would yield a coherent slice of what was happening. an unbiased sample. twitter is basically a medium for conversation. imagine there's a large party. would you rather listen to an out-of-order "most important" set parts of the conversation, or just a slice of conversation from a particular time? well, actually, both can be interesting, but generally the slice is more coherent. :-)

almog 5y ago

Assuming we're talking about the timeline "latest" mode (rather than "top"), IIRC in the past the used to do the home timeline processing on the read paths, but have long since opted to optimize for read latency, thus the heavy lifting is performed during the insertion, so in broad strokes, when someone post a tweet, the three main things that happen are: 1. Insertion of tweet to tweets table. 2. Insertion of that tweet-id to the home timelines of all that user's followers. 3. Insertion of that tweet-id to the user-timeline of that user. On the read-path, if I'm not mistaken, the only join that happen is between the requested timeline and the tweets table (which is replicated across cluster of machines but not partitioned, or at least I remember reading that was the case not many years ago)

lysp 5y ago

I use lists by subject matter, including a list of personal contacts. I then use tweet deck which shows a column of tweets per list. As these are separated by subject and are chronological, it makes it far easier to follow.