The ongoing saga of Space Karen and his social media toy just continues to rumble on. I confess I am somewhat surprised that the platform is still working: given the savage cuts to staffing of around 75%, I expected it to have collapsed into a smoking pile by now. It has had some ups and downs, but nothing too dramatic.
The main app continues to be worked upon, but note how I don’t say “improved”. The introduction of the “For you” view, where an algorithm decides what you see, was unwelcome. Especially so when this was made the default view. Twitter fixed this, but in my view it was a punt that it only decided to unwind after the protests.
Far more unwelcome is the removal of any means for third-party apps to connect to the Twitter service, to provide an alternative view. Tools such as Twitterific have built up a very strong following over many years, and they were simply cut off at the knees with no prior warning.
I can see why Twitter has done this. A third-party app might not show the content in the way that you, as Twitter, want it shown. It might filter out adverts and other items that are annoying to the customer, but important to the Twitter business model. Nevertheless, this cancellation was sudden and brutal, and very unwelcome to users.
I can just about cope with the iOS app but the macOS app is just horrible, and I shall be uninstalling that. It’s slow, buggy and often doesn’t update correctly. In addition, I would be happier if it actually had the same design
