Twitter has been experiencing some turbulence recently, with both investors and users not happy with how things seem to have progressed…
Recent reactions to the reports that Twitter will be making changes to its timeline, have been strongly received in the last few days, with the move from the existing reverse chronological format to an algorithm surfacing what it believes users will want to see in their timeline.
The speculation around the facts and reach of these changes fuelled an uproar amongst the Twitter hardcore, leaving many feeling helpless and heralding the end of the platform they know and love.
The Guardian’s Alex Hern (@alexhern) has written about the recent events and notes his experience with a test version of the possible new timeline.
His experience notes how the new format would provide “a much better experience for new users who check the service infrequently and thus run the risk of missing the best tweets from those they follow” however he also found the loss of the natural Twitter context to be jarring, with tweets being written “with an understanding that they’ll be read in the context of those sent before and after them — a context that was ripped away.”
State of the Twitter nation
Twitter needs the support of all stakeholders, users should trust in the company, and allow them to experiment on how to improve the product and experience for all. Twitter needs to cater to their core users, communicating and removing any fear, which could mean allowing them to partake in as little or as much of this new vision as possible.
Twitter users need an algorithm.
This is something we have been aware of for a while at Journie. The firehose of content whizzes by, and if you’re not there paying attention, you often miss it. The serendipitous moments when you discover a great tweet in your feed are amazing & can be of great value to you/your business, they spur you on to keep digging for more gold, but the goal (we feel) should be less time, more value.
Matt Galligan succiently gets the point across with 3 questions in his medium article Twitter needs an algorithm
Do you feel confident that you see 90% of the important tweets that are sent in your network on a daily basis?
If you answered yes, how about we pose it a different way: if you logged off for a few days, are you confident that you could come back and see even half of the most important tweets sent since you were gone?
Taking the example of a keynote live tweeting, if you weren’t able to look at Twitter till well after the event was over, would you rather scroll all the way back to the moment the keynote started, or would you rather get the highlights fed to you at the very top of your timeline?
We fall into camp algo, but believe it shouldn’t be the only option, allowing users to move between traditional & algorithmic easily.
The more vocal Twitter users are not happy with this possible change, and I can understand why. Don’t fix what ain’t broke. The problem is that the target for Twitter in the coming months & years will be gaining new users, and for them it is broke, the issues about adaptability and value for new users needs to be addressed to stop the platform from stagnating and shrivelling.
Algorithm fears
What is important? What is worth seeing? What isn’t? Can the algorithm answer these questions & if so, how are these factors decided?
Users are passionately disturbed by this latest proposed development, with a feeling of anger & helplessness that their platform is being taken away from them, and that the less popular, more niche voices that they want awareness of will be hidden away.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” Animal Farm — George Orwell
Our experience with algorithms & Twitter
At Journie we’re focused on helping people process the most popular & relevant conversations about their business & brand online.
We want people to spend less time in app & more time doing what they do best!
If you can get the relevant information and insights you need with a minimal time commitment then we’re doing our job.
We initially started with the concept of using algorithms to surface the most relevant tweets in a stack of cards, allowing the user to swipe through the irrelevant & take action where required, with the most relevant conversations to their business ranked first.
Spending time with early adopters and gathering feedback from experienced designers we soon realised that people aren’t comfortable with a limited representation of what matters to them, served in a one-at-a-time, fixed format.
The best example which brought the point home to us was from a potential customer, who put to us like this:
Would you want to be shown the 10 most important emails on a daily basis and only those 10, as decided by an algorithm?
It sound appealing, but you soon realise that the context of what’s important to you can change on an hourly basis, and where do the unexpected and often chance interaction factor within all this?
On hearing this we set about solving the problem another way, we make it quick and easy for our users to source and reduce a large potential pool of relevant conversations, and then decide for themselves what is and isn’t important to them.
Out current Twitter filters are time & date, likes, retweets, potential reach, velocity & top contributors.
Final thought
In my opinion the availability of an algorithmic timeline is very useful, but I don’t believe it should be a forced change on the masses (which I don’t think are the intentions of Twitter), but made accessible for existing users should they want it.
My questions are more focused on new adopters:
Would algorithmic be the default feed setting?
Would it provide more value to new users?
I don’t know, however it would be an interesting experiment for Twitter to run…
Originally posted to blog.journie.io
