{"id":1090,"date":"2015-01-15T07:34:06","date_gmt":"2015-01-15T12:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/?p=1090"},"modified":"2015-01-15T12:41:33","modified_gmt":"2015-01-15T17:41:33","slug":"curating-the-twitter-fire-hose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/curating-the-twitter-fire-hose\/","title":{"rendered":"Curating the Twitter Fire Hose"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FIRE<\/a>In the article Here’s What Is Limiting Twitter’s Mainstream Potential<\/a>, Mills Baker makes an intriguing proposal: Twitter’s chronological fire-hose format is limiting its ability to reach a mainstream audience. He says bringing in an algorithm \u00e0\u00a0la Facebook’s automatic timeline curation will bring joy and contentment to all twits worldwide. I respectfully disagree; I’m not up for any similar feed-wrecking Twitter “enhancement.”<\/p>\n

That’s the idea the author pushes, though. The story makes the analogy of a “rude editor:”<\/p>\n

If Twitter is your dynamic real-time newspaper, it\u2019s also a newspaper with a single editor: you. While that feels empowering, it\u2019s also burdensome; you are now required to tailor your timeline to your taste in perpetuity. Worse, you have\u00a0just one<\/i>\u00a0signal you can send to your \u201cnewsroom\u201d to indicate the kinds of content you want:\u00a0follow \/ unfollow a user.\u00a0<\/i>You\u2019re an editor whose only power is to hire or fire.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The author submits that you would be obliged to appreciate a machine-learning algorithm to take the role of “assistant editor,” curating your feed to your own likes and dislikes, and never showing anything outside your preferences.\u00a0Their theory is that the solution to bringing Twitter to the masses will “involve personalization through algorithmic feeds” instead of adding features to actually allow users to customize their own news.<\/p>\n

The article hails the Facebook overhaul as a great new feed-aggregating superhero: “[G]one are the political screeds, and instead I see photos of babies, dogs, and trips taken by people I actually like!”<\/p>\n

Perfecting the feed? Not for this Webhead.\u00a0What if I actually prefer thoughtful discussions and journal entries instead of endless graphic memes and photo galleries, cute as the babies are? Can I change it? Nope, the process is all invisible and unreachable.<\/p>\n

I grant that Twitter’s format does produce a number of irrelevant items in the news mix,\u00a0and that the full feed can be overwhelming at times. Just don’t give a mechanic a car and then superglue the hood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the article Here’s What Is Limiting Twitter’s Mainstream Potential, Mills Baker makes an intriguing proposal: Twitter’s chronological fire-hose format is limiting its ability to reach a mainstream audience. He says bringing in an algorithm \u00e0\u00a0la Facebook’s automatic timeline curation will bring joy and contentment to all twits worldwide. I respectfully disagree; I’m not up…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1098,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions\/1098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}