4 ms·

This is interesting. Do you think a service like Twitter would ever have the option for a user to differentiate between news-worthy tweets/posts from "minor tw

This is interesting. Do you think a service like Twitter would ever have the option for a user to differentiate between news-worthy tweets/posts from "minor tweets" about a person's everyday life? Or would there not be a clear enough distinction?

dylangs1030 13y ago
You could theoretically use the Streaming API to analyze tweets en masse from different sources/individuals. Coding in a bit of text analysis (length, blacklisting/whitelisting keywords, sentiment, etc.) would discriminate between superfluous tweets and the ones you care about. That'd would be a great way to automate the process of scrolling through crap every morning, but you'd need to build a web app to house the results and scroll through that instead. Of course, that's how I would do it as a third-party developer. Will Twitter ever support this? Doubt it. I don't think it's relevant to enough users to implement that kind of feature. Most people who use Twitter evidently enjoy reading what Justin Anniston and Jennifer Bieber eat for breakfast.
- jelled 13y ago
  This is essentially what we do with sports news at fancloud.com. By the time the tweets make it through our filters the end result is much more newsworthy then a raw twitter stream.
  - kafkaesque 13y ago
    It seems like there'd be a higher demand for these type of specialised content filters. I'm a big NHL fan, so I'll check out fancloud.com.
- danudey 13y ago
  Not sure if it's what you're suggesting specifically, but if you analyzed common links within a span of time and analyzed them for keywords, you could associate other tweets from certain individuals. Tim Bray or Zed Shaw, as random examples, could tweet about an issue without providing a link to it (to infer context), but you could infer context by looking for relevant links from similar people. If the system analyzed the links you clicked on (via the t.co URL shortener Twitter operates), the links you posted, and the topics you tweeted about, they could build a profile of interest for you and highlight those tweets. Their current 'you should check this out' system on twitter.com and in the twitter client seems to be 'hey, here's some stuff everyone else likes', which (the last time I looked at it) was complete tripe about idiotic topics that 'the masses' care about, with nothing about the sort of tech news or political/economic interest that I tend to prefer, but I feel like a personalized feed is something that would be far more useful to me, and probably many other people.
demachina 13y ago
First you kill off all Twitter replies, those are where the most noise is on a lot of entities you follow. Then you prioritize entities who consistently post interesting stuff, and you quickly filter out people who use Twitter as a chat tool or Facebook. Twitter at its best is short succinct one liners that quickly summarize the content you want the world to see with links that take you to the long form, and you only go there when the tweet conveys its something that will probably interest you. The second you start writing stuff longer than 140 chars it gets too long to quickly scan a stream and find the stuff you are really interested in to spend your time on. People who want more than 140 charts on Twitter are NUTS. It would destroy the whole point and the beauty of the thing, they totally don't get the concept. My client puts the people I am following in a bar on the left prioritized by the ones I like and read the most. @newsyc50 and @newsycombinator are at the top, along with @slashdot. I alwsys tap them first thing every day and I get EXACTLY what Malda was asking for, the top posts on Hacker News recently with no noise. @newsyc50 has links to the Hacker News comments and I go to them on topics that really interest me. I scroll down my avatar bar and look at other people I follow that aren't as consistently interesting when time permits. Twitter, if you get a good client, and spend time finding and following the right things, gets you all the news and info you could want, and you only get noise if you want it. I look at my whole stream to get a pulse of what's happening, or for the occasional serendipity, otherwise I just look at the streams of the things I am consistently interested in. Twitter is a beautiful thing, Dorsey deserves a billion for it. Unfortunately the current Twitter and its executive team have been pretty ghastly for a while, but that's usually what happens when a company heads to IPO.
- SupremumLimit 13y ago
  What client do you use?
adamauckland 13y ago
"One man's mundane and desperate existence is another man's Technicolor." How can the service differenciate? My interests differ from your interests. Often I see people re-post the same message if they think it will have value to their followers simply because not everyone is online at the same time.

dylangs1030 13y ago

You could theoretically use the Streaming API to analyze tweets en masse from different sources/individuals. Coding in a bit of text analysis (length, blacklisting/whitelisting keywords, sentiment, etc.) would discriminate between superfluous tweets and the ones you care about. That'd would be a great way to automate the process of scrolling through crap every morning, but you'd need to build a web app to house the results and scroll through that instead. Of course, that's how I would do it as a third-party developer. Will Twitter ever support this? Doubt it. I don't think it's relevant to enough users to implement that kind of feature. Most people who use Twitter evidently enjoy reading what Justin Anniston and Jennifer Bieber eat for breakfast.

jelled 13y ago
This is essentially what we do with sports news at fancloud.com. By the time the tweets make it through our filters the end result is much more newsworthy then a raw twitter stream.
- kafkaesque 13y ago
  It seems like there'd be a higher demand for these type of specialised content filters. I'm a big NHL fan, so I'll check out fancloud.com.
danudey 13y ago
Not sure if it's what you're suggesting specifically, but if you analyzed common links within a span of time and analyzed them for keywords, you could associate other tweets from certain individuals. Tim Bray or Zed Shaw, as random examples, could tweet about an issue without providing a link to it (to infer context), but you could infer context by looking for relevant links from similar people. If the system analyzed the links you clicked on (via the t.co URL shortener Twitter operates), the links you posted, and the topics you tweeted about, they could build a profile of interest for you and highlight those tweets. Their current 'you should check this out' system on twitter.com and in the twitter client seems to be 'hey, here's some stuff everyone else likes', which (the last time I looked at it) was complete tripe about idiotic topics that 'the masses' care about, with nothing about the sort of tech news or political/economic interest that I tend to prefer, but I feel like a personalized feed is something that would be far more useful to me, and probably many other people.

demachina 13y ago

First you kill off all Twitter replies, those are where the most noise is on a lot of entities you follow. Then you prioritize entities who consistently post interesting stuff, and you quickly filter out people who use Twitter as a chat tool or Facebook. Twitter at its best is short succinct one liners that quickly summarize the content you want the world to see with links that take you to the long form, and you only go there when the tweet conveys its something that will probably interest you. The second you start writing stuff longer than 140 chars it gets too long to quickly scan a stream and find the stuff you are really interested in to spend your time on. People who want more than 140 charts on Twitter are NUTS. It would destroy the whole point and the beauty of the thing, they totally don't get the concept. My client puts the people I am following in a bar on the left prioritized by the ones I like and read the most. @newsyc50 and @newsycombinator are at the top, along with @slashdot. I alwsys tap them first thing every day and I get EXACTLY what Malda was asking for, the top posts on Hacker News recently with no noise. @newsyc50 has links to the Hacker News comments and I go to them on topics that really interest me. I scroll down my avatar bar and look at other people I follow that aren't as consistently interesting when time permits. Twitter, if you get a good client, and spend time finding and following the right things, gets you all the news and info you could want, and you only get noise if you want it. I look at my whole stream to get a pulse of what's happening, or for the occasional serendipity, otherwise I just look at the streams of the things I am consistently interested in. Twitter is a beautiful thing, Dorsey deserves a billion for it. Unfortunately the current Twitter and its executive team have been pretty ghastly for a while, but that's usually what happens when a company heads to IPO.

SupremumLimit 13y ago
What client do you use?

adamauckland 13y ago

"One man's mundane and desperate existence is another man's Technicolor." How can the service differenciate? My interests differ from your interests. Often I see people re-post the same message if they think it will have value to their followers simply because not everyone is online at the same time.