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Twitter's Timeline Option Puts Important Tweets Up Top (engadget.com)

Posted by yaelk on from the #tweets dept.

Twitter is doing its best to make sure you see the best content in your timeline (at least thats what its hoping its doing with today's announcement of a new timeline option). The new feature drops what Twitter determines are the best tweets at the top of a user's timeline. For now, this feature is optional, so users can opt-in to see this timeline. In the coming weeks, it will slowly be rolled out to all users.

46 comments

  1. Still going to be optional by Sowelu · · Score: 0

    Yes it'll be opt-out eventually, but (as someone who's definitely keeping this feature off) I'm not convinced that this isn't what a majority of users want. Vocal power-users who use it to keep close contact with friends, sure, but those aren't a majority. I'm pretty sure that important stories and world-news stories are going to keep getting enough likes to keep them on top.

    It would be really nice if there was a feature to display all tweets from specific users, and only high ranked ones from other users...would cut down on spam a lot. As it is, it's really hard to follow lots of people because the signal to noise ratio is just that bad on any kind of social media.

    1. Re:Still going to be optional by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      Yes it'll be opt-out eventually,

      Will it? Will it be "opt out" like Yahoo's "important posts" in Yahoo Groups are "opt out"? I'm referring to the ads that show up mixed in with the actual group messages.

      I'm pretty sure that important stories and world-news stories are going to keep getting enough likes to keep them on top.

      I'm sorry, but if I'm not following someone or something, I don't want to see their twits ever. I don't care if a million strangers all vote up a twit telling them about cheap viagra, I don't want to see it, and it isn't important. And don't dismiss the idea that if voting up twits makes them show up on more screens that twit-spammers won't create the users to vote their stuff up.

    2. Re:Still going to be optional by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't use Twitter, do you?

      Twitter already dumps "sponsored" tweets into your timeline. You already get shown tweets that companies have paid to force you to see.

      The change is that the tweets from the people you actually care to see are going to start being hidden, and all you're going to see are the corporate sponsored tweets.

    3. Re:Still going to be optional by desdinova+216 · · Score: 2

      people still use yahoo groups?

    4. Re:Still going to be optional by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People still use twitter?

    5. Re:Still going to be optional by XXongo · · Score: 1

      Wait, don't people still use USENET?

    6. Re:Still going to be optional by Sowelu · · Score: 1

      No, this system doesn't inject new stuff. It reorganizes people you already follow. If you use Twitter to follow a bajillion human rights or news feeds (like a big part of their userbase), it means you'll mostly see the stuff with a lot of likes up top, and junk tweets with no info probably won't spam you. If you don't follow them you won't see them, aside from the sponsored stuff, and everybody's gotta make a living.

    7. Re:Still going to be optional by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There seem to be (mostly) two types of social media users: those who like/subscribe/follow everything that moves, and those that use it to keep track of specific topics or groups and have relatively few follows.
      For the first group, a curated timeline might make more sense. There is a lot of garbage out there, and sorting through hundreds of posts a day is too much work to be done manually for most people. On the other hand, for people who only get a small amount of new content pushed to them daily, screwing up the sorting makes it incredibly hard to make sure you haven't missed anything.
      Facebook handles this distinction poorly. Let's hope Twitter does a better job.

    8. Re:Still going to be optional by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't see those.

      Maybe my attempts at blocking ads is working?

      I'm quite ignorant of how twitter makes money - I presume others see ads. I didn't even know it was called a "timeline".

      The one thing that annoys me about my "timeline" is that if I'm logged out for too long, when I log back in they say "while you were away" and go through a sample of tweets from people I follow. I follow few enough people and they don't tweet all day long that it's easy enough just to scroll down and skim and see if they said anything interesting.

      Most of the people I follow sometimes don't even tweet anything for days, which is great if they don't have anything to say.

  2. Same thing that facebook tries to do... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 3, Insightful
    ... and facebook doesn't do it well. I constantly have to view my friends' pages directly to see what's going on because facebook's algorithm prioritizes the wrong posts onto my page.

    .
    Maybe twitter will be able to do better at reading my mind to determine what I want to read, maybe not.

    So long as I can disable it, I'm fine with it for now.

    1. Re:Same thing that facebook tries to do... by buchner.johannes · · Score: 4, Funny

      Facebook knows what is best for you. Stop trying to break out of that bubble.

      --
      NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
    2. Re:Same thing that facebook tries to do... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep. As someone who solely uses Facebook as a glorified "family pictures" service, it's really annoying the way I keep on missing pictures my family posts because rather than showing me those pictures it shows me pages my family has "liked."

      Of course, that's the idea: Facebook wants to prioritize what their advertisers paid me to see rather than what I want to see. So I get shown company pages for companies my family members have "liked" but not the family picture they thought they shared. The Facebook timeline interface is terrible. I just want to see the stuff my family posts, in order, without any filtering, and Facebook makes that impossible.

      It's sad to hear Twitter is going to do the same thing, even though Twitter never struck me as particularly useful (if I want to send 140 character messages to people, I have a cell phone). So I'm sorry to here yet another service is catering to advertisers at the expense of the users who use the service, but I'm not terribly surprised.

    3. Re:Same thing that facebook tries to do... by Sowelu · · Score: 2

      I like Twitter as a way to follow friends/family news that forces them to ramble less.

    4. Re:Same thing that facebook tries to do... by ColaMan · · Score: 1

      I change my facebook page from 'Top Stories' to 'Most Recent' on a regular basis. It used to be that it would remember that setting consistently...... then, strangely enough, it would start to revert to 'Top Stories' randomly.

      This also happened right about the time a little reminder got inserted at the top of the page saying that I was viewing, 'Most Recent' and did I want to go back to 'Top Stories'? No facebook, I do not, because all I tend to get is a shitty post from three days ago with 50 likes from friends, and I miss when someone is having a non-popular day. Like most people do.

      At least Tinfoil for Facebook on android keeps that reminder out of sight.....

      --

      You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
      There is a lot of hype here.
    5. Re:Same thing that facebook tries to do... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just so you're aware, "most recent" doesn't change the filtering. All it does is change the order your filtered Facebook feed is presented to you in.

      Which means you'll still miss the friend Facebook has decided isn't popular, but at least your popular friend's shitty post from three days ago will show up with the other three day old posts and Facebook will show you the various ads from pages people have liked in reverse chronological order... briefly, until it resets.

      And the most recent Facebook clients remove the "most recent" option anyway.

    6. Re:Same thing that facebook tries to do... by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1

      If they carry on like this in ten years we'll remember Twitter the same way we remember Yahoo now

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    7. Re:Same thing that facebook tries to do... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Twitter can't tell the difference between parody and endorsement so its "hate speech" filter will probably kill all of the funniest and most interesting comments right away.

  3. Inevitable now by spartacus_prime · · Score: 1

    What's the over/under on Slashdot incorporating a timeline on its front page?

    --
    If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
    1. Re:Inevitable now by Noah+Haders · · Score: 0

      a little more likely than the odds of Bernie Sanders defeating Donald Trump for the presidential election.

    2. Re:Inevitable now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's the over/under on Slashdot incorporating a timeline on its front page?

      You mean posts in reverse chronological order? They've been doing that since 1997 or so.

  4. Control Over What You Get to See by Kunedog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is not about "important" tweets any more than the "Trust and Safety Council" is about "harrassment" or "trolling." It's about controlling which content everyone is allowed to see (i.e. making it more like television).

    1. Re:Control Over What You Get to See by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Yep, and they're starting to hemorrhage users. Lot of theories floating around on financial forums and blogs that Jack is doing this deliberately to tank twitter so it can be bought out by someone. There are a few problems with that idea for twitter in general, there have been no takers. The tech market bubble is now popping...again...and there are a lot of people in the SF tech triangle that are no longer getting VC money, and they're worried. It's all dried up in the last few weeks as the stock market starts to enter into correction territory.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
  5. So, um, how does this work? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How can this feature exist when 'important tweet' is somewhere between 'theoretical' and 'logically impossible', and definitely not easy to find in the wild?

    1. Re:So, um, how does this work? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You misunderstand, this isn't about tweets that are important. This is about "important" tweets, determined by a convoluted prioritization scheme based on buzzwords, retweet rate, view count, and whether Mars is in Scorpio this month (the Ares/Antares conflict needed a special case in the code).

    2. Re:So, um, how does this work? by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      Kind of like mixing the water in the toilet bowl with a spoon for a bit to see which turd rises to the top?

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  6. "Important" tweets by russotto · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Important"

    1. Re:"Important" tweets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AFAICT Twitter is now manually vetting all tags for auto-completion to the extent that even perfectly innocuous stuff that starts trending (like celebrity deaths) with have AC delayed by upto a few hours.

      So yeah "important" tweets at the top, honest guv.

  7. FTFY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Important Tweets" = Paid advertisements and Sponsored content

  8. So..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So there is no such thing as an important tweet, this is obviously an admission the entire site is just crap thence the whole lot will be sent to the bottom of landfill

  9. Which part of RIP Twitter don't they get? by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    It's not a feature.

    It's a bug.

    We Said Edit!

    Listen to your users. Don't insult them.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    1. Re:Which part of RIP Twitter don't they get? by Sowelu · · Score: 1

      Edit is such a terrible idea. Twitter is used for breaking news. The risk of people posting incorrect information is outweighed by the risk of the historical record being modified.

  10. what is the advantage of twitter? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can someone explain the advantage of Twitter over and above something like usenet, where:

    * I am in 100% control of whose posts I see, who I "follow" or killfile, etc.

    * There is no such thing as "sponsored posts"

    * It is uncensored.

    * It is not existing for the purpose of monitizing me.

    * It has discussions on every topic you can imagine and then some, neatly sorted into a searchable hierarchy.

    * I can decide the sort order of posts because that is 100% up to my local viewer.

    How is twitter better? It seems worse in at least some of those ways.

    1. Re:what is the advantage of twitter? by Sowelu · · Score: 2

      Usenet has had a signal/noise ratio of about 1% since the late 90s. Who the hell wants to maintain killfiles? It sure isn't most users, who keep spamming up groups with responses to trolls.

    2. Re:what is the advantage of twitter? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Twitter has no signal and 100% noise. Usenet wins.

  11. Important what? by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

    "Important tweets", and it's said with a straight face as if such a thing actually exists.

    "Important tweets" are like "important theological questions"....they basically don't exist, although I'd bet there are definitely tweets that are more important than any theological question.

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  12. Twitter, meet shark by s1d3track3D · · Score: 1

    it's fun watching tech/social companies implode, where do they get this stuff?

    Q: we have to be more relevant, stats show we're lagging, ideas?
    A: yeah, let's do something stupid that no one will like, we can get away with it for awhile because we're leaders in our domain.

    Hello uber surge pricing, hello facebook targeted ads/privacy, hello paypal 6 month buyer protection, etc.
    At least google is at least paying attention a little, goodbye plus.

  13. So much online trolling... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, given what passes for trolling online, we really need to help educate people on how to be better allys.

  14. Would be useful, if focused on dupes. by Maltheus · · Score: 1

    I don't want algorithms deciding what's important to me, but I would like something that filters out duplicate (or near duplicate) posts. I like using twitter as a kind of RSS feed, but I'm tired of media outlets retweeting the same stuff, several times an hour, all day long. I could probably get through my feed in half the time if all that spam was filtered out.

  15. Apostrophes, damn it! by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

    at least thats what its hoping its doing

    Come ooooon.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  16. Timeline? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why in the world is it still called a timeline if there is no time based structure to it?

    captcha: badness

  17. As long as you can opt out... by iampiti · · Score: 1

    As long as you can opt out it's fine by me but I'm not convinced this'll be an option in the long run.
    One thing that gives me some hope is that Twitter is not as populas as Facebook so they're more likely to turn around decisions that most users dislike

  18. This is for monetisation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When the feed is controlled by algorithms, you can sell modifiers to those algorithms.

  19. So much for "live tweeting" by danomatika · · Score: 1

    If the strictly chronological order disappears, so will all those users who need time-based stuff like weather, live event tweeting, etc.

  20. Elephant in the Room by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you PAY Twitter, they will insert your ADVERTISMENTS into peoples timelines. So this is public relations excusing that, and OP didn't even notice it. http://lifehacker.com/how-to-t...