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Twitter Testing Non-Chronological Timelines (vice.com)
sarahnaomi writes with this excerpt from Motherboard: Brace yourself, because your favorite social media platform might get turned on its head: Twitter is experimenting with a new way of sorting your timeline that breaks with the reverse-chronological format it has used since its inception. Certain users have already been selected for testing, and a Twitter search for "timeline out of order" revealed a lot of confused Tweeters. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed via email that this is "an experiment. We're continuing to explore ways to surface the best content for people using Twitter." Presumably, Twitter is working with algorithms similar to the ones Facebook uses to order items on your News Feed.
I curse the name of Zuckerberg each time I realize that my view of Facebook has been switched from "Most Recent" to "Top Stories" -- Top Stories according to whom?
It should be configurable.
If I want it reverse-chronological format the I should be able to set that and not have it changed. If twitter wants to offer a bunch of other configuration options then they should be configurable as well.
Same with Facebook, if I pick Most Recent then leave it Most Recent.
An option to see everything since last checked from oldest to newest.
For that last note: on Facebook, "Most Recent" isn't actually the most recent posts at all. A couple things are happening. Firstly, it is the "Most recently interacted with", meaning if something is commented on, it jumps to the front of the line. Next, Facebook selects aprox 320 posts to show each user, with new content appearing every now and then, and content being removed after about 24-72 hours. Even if you follow 1000 pages posting once a day, Facebook will only select the aprox 320 that it thinks you want. From here, "Most Recent" then only becomes the most recent of this smaller selection, not all posts from your potential feed. So when Facebook switches between "Top Stories" and "Most Recent", you're honestly not getting anything new/different between the two, just sorting smaller segment of your feed that it deems you should be able to view.
Problem 1: they don't keep track across devices. If I log in from one web browser and see new notifications, it's not uncommon for me to then log on via a different web browser half a day later and some of those notifications are back to being new again. Bah. What does this have to do with this "news" from TFA? Apparently I was part of the "test group" unfortunately, because I've been getting this out-of-order crap for a long while. If I check twitter from my phone in the morning and catch up on everything, then in the evening I have to wade through a lot of "while you were away" crap that was posted days ago despite my having logged on hours before, and then I can't find what was actually posted since the last time I was logged on...that's not "confusion." That's a mix of "completely idiotic UX," "very poor backend tracking of what has already been viewed," and "extremely poor guesses as to what I might be interested in, elevating feeds in which I'm only marginally interested while obfuscating those in which I have a lot of interest." I suspect that third one has to do with how many likes/whatever the person has, but...sometimes people are interested in someone for different reasons. I follow comedians, and if personX is funnier than personY, but personY looks awesome in a bikini, then that doesn't mean I want you to blare personY's posts at me and hide personX's posts... I'm in SoCal, if I want to see a really fit girl in a bikini, I walk outside and look in any direction.
If this happens to my account, I'm calling Twitter out on it. I hate this behavior from Facebook, to the point that I don't even go to the site anymore. If I wanted anything other than most recent at the top, I'd set that myself. Not let some half-wit algorithm dictate what's most relevant in respect to my social media experience. I want to be the half-wit in charge of what's most relevant on my Twitter and Facebook timelines.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
Isn't it a bit ironic, don't you think, for there to be a slashdot discussion about a website that dramatically changes a loved posting and discussion format, into one that is widely despised, despite overwhelming feedback against the change? I remember back when I could see, in my profile, how many responses my posts had...and could easily find and respond to them...and when I wasn't given a teeny tiny little box into which to type my responses, with an entire empty webpage staring at me in all the other directions of the screen. And and and...get off my lawn, you damn kids! ;)
"ways to surface the best content" - yet another piece of market-speak. Hint - if you have to resort to market-speak, you're doing a sh*tty job somewhere along the line.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I didn't understand how to use Twitter for almost a year... I was reading posts of people I followed. Then ... I got it. It's about the search box in the top right corner. Enter something professional which is rare, esoteric, something like "small indonesian bananas" or maybe "firefox spyware" and you can actually meet people who know something about it, share the interest, people you'd never have known about, much faster than if you rely on publications or blogs. If a journalist writes a story which is nonsense, you can tag links with keywords and find dozens of people who are now aware of the nonsense and who comment on it, and editors find out.
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