Feb 6, 2016

The Joy of Rumors

Jack Dorsey
The first social network that I used on the internet, back in the previous millennium, was internet relay chat. I've used Facebook, but over the years it became so heavily commercialized that I now rarely use it. I've used Twitter since 2009, but I'm not much of a user, as I've previously mentioned.

rest in peace, Twitter
Since Jack Dorsey became CEO last year, there have been a few alterations to the service. Heart that? I'm not a pop culture aficionado, so I don't find the "moments" feature to be useful. For some time now, I've been subjected to the whims of a bot that selects a few "missed tweets" to place at the top of my timeline "while you were away". Annoyingly, sometimes after reading these bot-curated tweets, they have persistently remained at the top of my timeline. I've developed the theory that there is just one high school dropout who develops new code for Twitter. Buggy code. Ya, that's my theory for why Twitter is so slow to change. That high school dropout can't figure out how to make an "edit" feature so that users can correct errors in their tweets.
source

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I'm intrigued by the idea that Twitter might increase the size limit on the number of text characters in a tweet. Today a rumor has spread on the interwebs (apparent source) that Twitter plans to alter user timelines by allowing an algorithm to to take control of which tweets appear at the top of a user's feed.

I must say, one of the most fun aspects of Twitter is watching users go ballistic when these sorts of rumors spread. I suspect a conspiracy aimed at getting free news coverage for Twitter.

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Related Reading: a better rumor  

Next: aliens in the Solar System

Followup: Twitter's new timeline option
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