Revelations

Twitter revealed

Three weeks ago I was amused by a tweetstorm that erupted over rumors about Twitter changing the behavior of their timelines.

I can't avoid wondering what happens in the secret corporate burrows and warrens of Twitter. I don't expect too much.... just lotsa scheming about how to make $$$$.

I can't even bring myself to complain about the bugs in Twitter software and inexplicable "features" such as the lack of an edit button for tweets. Why not allow users to set a 1 minute delay on their own tweet going "live", just long enough to see that idiotic spelling error and fix it? We will never know.

opt-in for the chance to find out if Twitter's bot can read your mind

I also can't say that I am surprised to learn that folks from corporations lie to their customers. Nor was I surprised to find that Twitter did change their software in the way that the rumor from three weeks ago said they would. For now, you have to "opt in" so that you can experience the changed timeline, but the wording of the description of this "feature" (below) strongly suggests that the original plan was for us to be forced to opt out.

life in the Twitterverse

Maybe some day I'll experiment with Twitter's software and see if it can really predict which tweets I want to read first. If I knew something about the algorithm that they use, then I might be tempted to opt in.

I don't feel much pressure to opt in because I don't get very many tweets in my timeline. I tend to follow people who only post a few thoughtful tweets.

Update: March 16th. 40 days ago we were told that Twitter would put an end to the user timeline. Today Twitter flipped the switch:

So for me, this new "feature" became opt-out. Having no information about their algorithm for selecting "the best Tweets", I opted out.

Next: two conflicting versions of a story