A Twitter meme — #RIPTwitter — took the social network by storm over the weekend. Users complained about a rumored change from a traditional Twitter user feed to an algorithmic-sourced feed next week. The angst was inspired by this BuzzFeed post reporting the change.
The algorithm would source the most popular stories in people’s Twitter feeds. Users believed the experience would be bad enough to kill the network. The meme was so overpowering it caused founder and current CEO Jack Dorsey to make a statement and allay concerns:
Hello Twitter! Regarding #RIPTwitter: I want you all to know we're always listening. We never planned to reorder timelines next week.
— Jack (@jack) February 6, 2016
But in reality, would an algorithm really kill Twitter? I don’t think so. It would probably make the experience better by eliminating bad spammy link-based Tweets usually sourced by marketers and inane ranters.
Tweets that aren’t interesting, including the overwhelming majority of tweets marketers push out every business day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., would lose priority. Without engagement, most of those tweets would fail to trigger the algorithm. They would die in the machine.
Conversely, the tweets that get the most engagement in a stream would rise to the top. I think this would be a fantastic development that would make Twitter’s stream much more competitive with Facebook, LinkedIn and to a lesser extent Google+. And it would force brands to invest in real conversations instead of simply publishing.
Further, based on Jack’s tweet, afterwards power users can simply pull down their screen or refresh their feed to get the traditional timeline. So no, Twitter algorithms won’t kill the social network. But based on the incredible amount of spammy marketing junk and bad content on the social network — even those based on popular topics and hashtags — well, an algorithm can only improve the experience.
Letting Go of 2400 Followers
Every time I blog about Twitter losing its mojo, I receive several comments about how that’s my fault. Specifically, that I followed the people who post spam, so shame on me.
After my last post about how Twitter can improve its experience, I decided to listen to them and unfollowed 2400 Twitter users. This isn’t one of these, “I unfollowed all of you posts” that bloggers drop for attention. I actually did most of this at the beginning of last month so if I was seeking to draw attention, that would have been the time. Plus I would have dumped another 1500 out of my remaining 2000 followers.
No, this was an experiment to get rid of what Malcolm Gladwell would call weak ties on my social network. Specifically, I cut people I did not know or just had a brief acquaintance with and who are also marketers. I also unfollowed people who simply use Twitter to drop links, marketing or not).
What happened?
My experience definitely improved, not enough to make Twitter thrilling again, but the stream did seem to liven up a bit. I began engaging more, too.
The funny thing was that I did not receive one peep about the mass unfollowing either, which substantiates my belief that these people weren’t vested in being engaged in a conversation with me, at least on Twitter. About 200 people have auto unfollow bots or noticed, and unfollowed me back. The rest stuck around for whatever reason.
I may go further and drop some more followers when I get a chance. Whenever I am in the network and I see someone just dropping links or posting ridiculous spam, I unfollow them then and there. It’s adding up to a better Twitter that I actually care about again.
What do you think?