Twitter Is Reviving the Chronological Timeline

In a series of tweets, Twitter announced it will be bringing back the purely chronological timeline in the coming weeks. Currently, the timeline is set up to deliver tweets that people "might have missed" or things supposedly "liked" by people they follow, but some have complained that it misses tweets. Engadget reports: A change that's in place now, is Twitter's "Show the best Tweets first" setting. Starting today, if a user has it turned off it will also eliminate the "In case you missed it" roundups and suggested tweets from people you don't follow. It sounds like exactly the change people have been looking for, and even pursued by setting up filters on their own like the one found at RealTwitter.com.

Good.

[Desler]

Good. Algorithmic timelines are shit.

Feature was horrible

[SuperKendall]

The most egregious aspect of the "tweets you might have missed" section was that almost always it was TWEETS I HAD ALREADY SEEN!!!!

I might have even left on that feature, if it simply removed any tweet I had already loaded from the server. Having a bunch of tweets I had already seen first masked the newer tweets I might actually have wanted to see.

I have no faith that Twitter can get anything right so I turned that checkmark right off. Just show me a simple timeline Twitter, if you can handle it.

Re:

[DerekLyons]

The most egregious aspect of the "tweets you might have missed" section was that almost always it was TWEETS I HAD ALREADY SEEN!!!!

I've seen the following more than once:

(Tweet about x)

Tweets you might have missed:

(The exact same dammed tweet!)

The problem isn't the "Tweets you might have missed" as much as the function is implemented so badly.

Re:

[antdude]

Huh? I didn't know you could disable it. I guess I will go find it!

Twitter fucking sucks...

[Anonymous Coward]

Use Mastodan if you really must microblog your life, but really if you just wanna talk shit, go on irc with a vpn. Corporate social media is hazardous to your health.

Huh?

[bn-7bc]

Huh, I feel like an idiot right now, arn’t timlenes chronolgicsl or invese chronological by the nature of tjem beeing timelines?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we have a doctor in the room?

Re:Huh?

[Spamalope]

Not when they're Animal Farm (TM) timelines where some times are more equal than others.

Given that it's twitter, I'd suspect it's influenced by ad impression traction (engagement/clickbaity-ness), paid promotion and politics. If the feed is curated by them, the opportunity to 'fully monetize' the situation or use it for political advocacy without outright appearing to do that is greatly improved - and they can gradually increase it as users get used to it as long as they get traction at first. I wonder if they'll really turn it off, or only split the difference so it's less bad than the current option but leaning the direction they want.

Re:

[cascadingstylesheet]

Huh, I feel like an idiot right now, arn’t timlenes chronolgicsl or invese chronological by the nature of tjem beeing timelines?

You'd think, huh?

But timelines that aren't really chronological are in fact the special sauce that these glorified micro-blogging platforms (Facebook, Twitter) have brought to the table.

so timelines are going to be timelines now ok

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there some other kind of timeline?

Use tweetdeck.twitter.com

[fbobraga]

This shit don't reach that :D

Re:

[fbobraga]

I think it doesn't happens (maybe yet...) It's why third party clients are needed (personally, I use the https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com] on the phone, and https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ [twitter.com] on the Desktop [at least, for now])

Wow - and they’re doing it right

[93 Escort Wagon]

I just logged into Twitter to uncheck this new setting because OF COURSE I WOULD... and they actually have it already unchecked by default!

You get a rare “Kudos!” From me today, Twitter.

Twitter is a dumpster fire

[bradley13]

Maybe people who have been using Twitter from the start have managed to follow the changes to how things are presented. For those of us who just occasionally click a link that lands us in the service, it's simply a mess. Tweets seems to be vaguely chronological, but only vaguely. There's simply no obvious way to know what has been selected for your viewing pleasure, and what has been omitted. And this doesn't even get into the whole question of censorship.

First slashdotting?

[everyplace]

Pretty excited that http://realtwitter.com/ [realtwitter.com] gets the shout-out in this post (see this tweet [twitter.com] for background information). Also excited that Twitter decided to implement this functionality for real.

See this less often

[bobbutts]

I always click on see this less often, yet it's always there regardless. It trained me to stop going there. Maybe I'll be less annoyed with future visits.

Lack of feature is now a feature?

[Zaphod The 42nd]

This is how it always should have worked. It would have still worked this way if not for bone-headed design ideas. Its not so much trying to improve as it is walking back a bunch of terrible ideas.

The sad part is other sites like Facebook don't even give you this option. Who the hell is designing these social media sites? I hate hate hate hate this "you'll do things our way and you'll like it" mentality. Give me options. Give me choice. Give me freedom.