Aug 8, 2010
Notes

On Who To Follow

So, Twitter’s got a new recommendations feature called Who To Follow. The feeling I’m getting from around the place is that it’s not such a great feature. I don’t think recommendations are a bad idea, but I think that Twitter’s going about it the wrong way. Here are two reasons why Who To Follow is Doing It Wrong™.

  1. All it’s doing is trying to get you to fill in the graph. Even then, it’s not being all that smart about how it does that. Who To Follow puts together a big graph of who follows who and tells you where the holes are so you can fill them in. Some of us put a lot of thought into who we follow, and some of us intentionally leave those holes there. I’ve already had Twitter recommend some people to me whose tweets I know I don’t enjoy. I know others have experienced same. It just doesn’t seem like a very subtle or nuanced system — basing recommendations on who follows who gives you a very shallow algorithm. Think about it — Who To Follow bases recommendations on a series of one-bit (“following” or “not-following”) relationships between people, and that’s it. No consideration for anything deeper.

  2. It’s pushing new people on you. Constantly. Whenever you hit the homepage, it’s there. People aren’t always looking for new friends1. The most common thing I’ve heard so far is that recommendations are a good idea, but that there should be some way to hide it.

If only there was some kind of website thing that did Twitter recommendations that were tailored to each individual user and that also wasn’t always pushing new potential friends on you.

Oh well.

1: I can only assume that Twitter thought of this at some point, which makes me wonder why they put Who To Follow on the homepage — maybe they noticed a slowdown in users following new people over time and decided to give users a very easy, visible way to follow new people. They’re the only ones that have access to that kind of data at a macro level, so I couldn’t say for sure. Maybe they’re just putting it on the homepage for now, for the launch of the feature.

Jun 29, 2010
Notes
twitter-crushes on GitHub (.zip download) Tumblr has a thing called “Crushes” that shows you whose posts you’ve Liked the most. I made a little thing like that for Twitter to show you whose twitters you’ve Favorited the most. You run it from the command-line, à la Van Hœt. If you want to find out who you favr the most on Twitter, try it out. You don’t need to give it your Twitter password or anything. Usage: python twitter-crushes.py username [pages] Arguments: username: your username (or the username of the person whose favorites you want to graph) pages: the number of pages of favorites you want to graph (there are 20 favorites on each page, btw) I recommend running twitter-crushes and getting about 20 pages worth of Favorites. That way, you get a bit of a long-term idea of whose twitters you’re favring. Oh, and a warning: every one of the pages counts as an unauthenticated request to Twitter, of which you’re allowed 150 per hour from a single IP address. So, if you run twitter-crushes and graph 15 pages worth of Favorites, you could only do that ten times every hour. So that’s a slight limitation.

twitter-crushes on GitHub (.zip download)

Tumblr has a thing called “Crushes” that shows you whose posts you’ve Liked the most. I made a little thing like that for Twitter to show you whose twitters you’ve Favorited the most. You run it from the command-line, à la Van Hœt. If you want to find out who you favr the most on Twitter, try it out. You don’t need to give it your Twitter password or anything.

Usage: python twitter-crushes.py username [pages]

Arguments:

  • username: your username (or the username of the person whose favorites you want to graph)
  • pages: the number of pages of favorites you want to graph (there are 20 favorites on each page, btw)

I recommend running twitter-crushes and getting about 20 pages worth of Favorites. That way, you get a bit of a long-term idea of whose twitters you’re favring.

Oh, and a warning: every one of the pages counts as an unauthenticated request to Twitter, of which you’re allowed 150 per hour from a single IP address. So, if you run twitter-crushes and graph 15 pages worth of Favorites, you could only do that ten times every hour. So that’s a slight limitation.

Jun 3, 2010
Notes
+1, as they say. The iPad’s browser is an interesting beast for a web designer — there are three options: treat the iPad’s browser as a mobile browser (it still is MobileSafari, after all), treat the iPad’s browser as a desktop browser, or have a third version of the website specifically for the iPad (or hypothetical non-iPads that have the iPad’s form factor). Going down the first route gives iPad users the undesirable situation that Adam quipped about. Choosing the second option means some “heavy” (in terms of scripts, content, viewport size, etc.) websites run slowly on the iPad. The third option means more work for designers (a whole new stylesheet, more advanced user-agent checking (when people just render the mobile version if the user agent contains “mobile” or whatever, that makes me a little mad)). No-one knows quite what to do yet. Personally, I like the idea that the iPad’s browser should just render webpages as if the request is coming from a desktop browser. Sure, some sites will be a bit slow. Suck it up, princess1. In my opinion, you should render pages with a mobile stylesheet iff the browser is from a truly mobile device — if people are likely to be moving while they’re using your site, render the mobile version. Otherwise, go with the desktop version. Disclaimer: I know nothing about how to make internet. I am but a peon with a QWERTY keyboard. 1: Obviously, I think that sites should swap out Flash videos for non-Flash videos when the request is coming from an iPhone or iPad. Sites already do that when they can, so it’s not as much of an issue.

+1, as they say.

The iPad’s browser is an interesting beast for a web designer — there are three options:

  1. treat the iPad’s browser as a mobile browser (it still is MobileSafari, after all),
  2. treat the iPad’s browser as a desktop browser, or
  3. have a third version of the website specifically for the iPad (or hypothetical non-iPads that have the iPad’s form factor).

Going down the first route gives iPad users the undesirable situation that Adam quipped about. Choosing the second option means some “heavy” (in terms of scripts, content, viewport size, etc.) websites run slowly on the iPad. The third option means more work for designers (a whole new stylesheet, more advanced user-agent checking (when people just render the mobile version if the user agent contains “mobile” or whatever, that makes me a little mad)).

No-one knows quite what to do yet. Personally, I like the idea that the iPad’s browser should just render webpages as if the request is coming from a desktop browser. Sure, some sites will be a bit slow. Suck it up, princess1. In my opinion, you should render pages with a mobile stylesheet iff the browser is from a truly mobile device — if people are likely to be moving while they’re using your site, render the mobile version. Otherwise, go with the desktop version.

Disclaimer: I know nothing about how to make internet. I am but a peon with a QWERTY keyboard.

1: Obviously, I think that sites should swap out Flash videos for non-Flash videos when the request is coming from an iPhone or iPad. Sites already do that when they can, so it’s not as much of an issue.

Mar 22, 2010
Notes
11 Hours It took me eleven hours to decide that four was the appropriate number of newlines. I started with three, but there wasn’t enough of a gap. Then I tried six — way too much. But four… now that’s the right number of newlines. Runner-up prize goes to

11 Hours

It took me eleven hours to decide that four was the appropriate number of newlines. I started with three, but there wasn’t enough of a gap. Then I tried six — way too much. But four… now that’s the right number of newlines.

Runner-up prize goes to
Fletch. Lives.

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The writings and other things of Scott Jackson, an amateur at everything. Subscribe via RSS.