Twitter forcing algorithmic timeline with latest update - July 2019

Dan Robinson

Dan Robinson

EF5
Joined
Jan 14, 2011
Messages
3,128
Location
St. Louis
The latest update to Twitter that rolled out last week now forces an algorithmic timeline for more users. It can only be deactivated temporarily, just like the Facebook timeline does. The shift to algorithmic post sorting has been in Twitter's plans for a long time, but pushback from its user base has until now prevented them from implementing it.

This means the end of Twitter's usefulness for realtime weather information. I just deleted my account.

This is what i see when switching to chronological:

twalgo.jpg
 
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Twitter still hasn't added an 'EDIT" button 13 years in. I doubt any user pushback will deter them from their masterplan to ruin a once worthwhile platform. That's the problem with start-up/venture capitalism......sometimes they accidentally create a product with potential, but the end goal of "build it, sell it, get out" destroys so many promising, long-term entities.

Twitter is already worthless for sharing videos. That makes me an idiot for still using it.
 
Shane Adams said:
Twitter still hasn't added an 'EDIT" button 13 years in. I doubt any user pushback will deter them from their masterplan to ruin a once worthwhile platform. That's the problem with start-up/venture capitalism......sometimes they accidentally create a product with potential, but the end goal of "build it, sell it, get out" destroys so many promising, long-term entities.

Twitter is already worthless for sharing videos. That makes me an idiot for still using it.
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Hasn't NWS said to put images in your report via Twitter?
Twitter is not going to be able to be used for reporting, don't see how.
 
Ben Holcomb said:
I've actually found Twitter to reach more people than facebook or youtube. Not for youtube links, but for native video uploaded directly to twitter.
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I’ve had the same experience. I’ve also had the most engagement on Twitter, overall. Instagram has been growing and I’ve actually had much more traction with video on Instagram than YouTube in recent months, but I think viral video would probably do better on the latter.

I’ve refused to update Twitter for months, as I’ve noticed them creeping in new “features,” like reverting back to algorithm timelines. Does anyone know if it’s mandatory, or only if you update? Or is it on the desktop version? I’ve heard some complaints lately that the desktop version of Twitter was updated recently.
 
Twitterific automatically displays your timeline in chronological order, and also has an edit button.
 
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rdale said:
Tweetdeck automatically displays your timeline in chronological order, and also has an edit button.
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Tweetdeck is great, but I think a lot of us (at least myself included) mainly use Twitter via app. Especially when on the go storm chasing. Weather information, especially time sensitive, breaking severe weather information, becomes next to useless to share on social media without a chronological timeline.

One site cited that 80% of Twitter users are mobile and that 93% of twitter video views are mobile.
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It's been like this for quite a while for me on the mobile platform. Every few days I have to hit the button to switch back to chronological. Considering there still isn't an edit button, I just don't see any amount of pushback changing this either. I know a lot of y'all try to use social media to monetize your own content (I don't personally but I get that for some of y'all that's the main reason for an online presence) but what's really the alternative here? Xanga, Myspace, etc. gave way to Facebook, Twitter, and the like, so I imagine they will give way in time to something else that *might* briefly create an opportunity to monetize, but at this point what else is there to do?

I've never felt like social media was the greatest means for real time weather notifications anyway and this more or less solidifies that thought. It's just too easy to get lost in the shuffle.
 
It is awful when you search for something and get top results that are a couple years old. I know you can switch to latest, but their algorithm needs to be re-worked.
 
To be honest, I've about given up on social media like FB and Twitter. FB has so much noise (politicis, arguing, etc etc) that it's useless to me for the most part. If not for a couple of clubs I belong to that have an FB presence, I'd never use it. Twitter isn't quite as annoying, but it's getting there. The top stories junk is just driving me away faster.
 
I have used Twitter for realtime weather information for some time now. The implementation of this is not good. I have NOT used FB for weather information of any kind in years. I will watch Twitter for a while and see how it goes. If Twitter wishes to keep this and not allow someone to set Tweets for chronological all the time, I will be deleting my account as well.
 
How the hell do you guys find these lists/groups? I'm literally the only chaser I know not on that damn list. Every search I've done on Twitter for weather/chasing groups only nets me lists of tweets with those words as hashtags. It's like CFDG all over again, except a generation later.
 
Been many years since i had a twitter account, actually a developer account.
Based on what James posted decided to give it try.
Not impressed. Too much junk.

I have to agree with Shane, I could really never figure out how to James' list into my list.
 
Another thing that is quite evident now is that Twitter is throttling views of off-platform links (Youtube, your web site, etc) just like Facebook does. Engagement on links for me has dropped to nearly nothing.

The problem is that even if you could permanently switch your own timeline back to reverse-chronological (or use Tweetdeck or other third party apps), most people on Twitter either don't know how to change theirs or won't bother, so everything you post is just going to increasingly go into the void aside from the users that regularly engage with your content. Exactly like the big engagement drop-offs I saw with Facebook several years ago that prompted me to ditch that platform and never go back.
 
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Dan Robinson said:
I removed my account this week, that's it for my involvement in social media.
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I don't blame you. I miss the days when forums were the gathering place, so if we can ever get even a part of that back I'll be happy. I hate Facebook with a passion and Twitter isn't much better.
 
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