Almost a year ago, I wrote about how Twitter is stupid, but could easily be made smarter. A nice time to make it better would be when completely revamping the web site.
So when I finally got “New Twitter” today, I had hope that it would fix all the little stupidities that made the old Twitter impossible to navigate if forced to use the web site (rather than a good standalone client application).
Somehow, it’s even worse.
New Twitter looks nice, and makes it easy to follow conversations, find related tweets, and see photos and other media without leaving the web site. So yeah, it’s an improvement in some ways. Unfortunately, it’s still got this one little flaw: it’s impossible to fucking read your Twitter feed in any way that resembles how people actually read stuff.
Am I missing something? Because as I see it now, here is how you’re supposed to catch up with your friends’ updates:
1) Log in to Twitter.
2) Scroll down to the bottom of the page for some reason.
3) Start reading from bottom to top for some reason.
4) Get to the “last” tweet, which is actually at the top for some reason.
5) See that there are X number of new tweets. Click to display them.
6) You now have to scroll down X tweets to get to where you left off. Methods for accomplishing this include:
- Scrolling down and skimming every tweet until you find one you recognize, like some really boring version of Where’s Waldo.
- Going down exactly X tweets, counting by hand. Might have to use your fingers.
- Look for the really thin line that indicates where you last refreshed. Oh, they got rid of the only method that made sense.
- Voodoo.
Phronk.com 
Comments
16 responses to “New Twitter is Still Stupid”
I like the “stream” method (new posts on top) but there's got to be a better way where they invisibly load on top and you continue scrolling up, just like every other twitter app.
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I like the “stream” method (new posts on top) but there's got to be a better way where they invisibly load on top and you continue scrolling up, just like every other twitter app.
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Hey Phronk,
I'm definitely not interested in reading all tweets in my timeline. It would take all of my time and sanity!
Instead, I catch a glimpse of the latest few tweets, follow/join any conversations that interest me, check my mentions, and that's it. Check back in an hour or so.
Your method is interesting, but I could not keep it up.
Cheers,
gav
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Hey Phronk,I'm definitely not interested in reading all tweets in my timeline. It would take all of my time and sanity!Instead, I catch a glimpse of the latest few tweets, follow/join any conversations that interest me, check my mentions, and that's it. Check back in an hour or so.Your method is interesting, but I could not keep it up.Cheers,gav
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I don't really see the advantage of putting new stuff at the top (except it avoids having to put the arbitrary “staring point” at the top instead of the bottom). But either way, yeah, the main need is having them invisibly load so you can just scroll continuously. Or at least have an easy way to remember where you left off, even if you refresh manually.
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I don't really see the advantage of putting new stuff at the top (except it avoids having to put the arbitrary “staring point” at the top instead of the bottom). But either way, yeah, the main need is having them invisibly load so you can just scroll continuously. Or at least have an easy way to remember where you left off, even if you refresh manually.
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Gavin: I don't read all my tweets either. But with a useable client, at least I can skip over a chunk of my timeline by just scrolling past it. It gives me SOME sense of how much I've missed; I can, say, only catch up with the last half-hour. With Twitter.com, that's impossible without some of the complicated shenanigans I mention in the post.
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Gavin: I don't read all my tweets either. But with a useable client, at least I can skip over a chunk of my timeline by just scrolling past it. It gives me SOME sense of how much I've missed; I can, say, only catch up with the last half-hour. With Twitter.com, that's impossible without some of the complicated shenanigans I mention in the post.
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I use the site because work blocked TwitterGadget, which is useful, but still backwards. Me no likey the new Twitter format. To me it feels like they took the worst elements and exaggerated them.
Ah well, it is still free.
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I use the site because work blocked TwitterGadget, which is useful, but still backwards. Me no likey the new Twitter format. To me it feels like they took the worst elements and exaggerated them.Ah well, it is still free.
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I still don't see it is all that useful… maybe I am missing something…
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I still don't see it is all that useful… maybe I am missing something…
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The new Twitter is still slow as hell. I use Twitter but I rarely log in to the site. I used a program to access my Twitter.
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The new Twitter is still slow as hell. I use Twitter but I rarely log in to the site. I used a program to access my Twitter.
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