How to see someones timeline on Twitter

Author here: In developing this I discovered that Twitter really doesn't care about lists. The limits on API usage and aggressive following are well documented, but anything about lists is minor.

Also, if anyone from Twitter is reading: it would be nice if Twitter implemented a way to subscribe to someone's timeline instead of having to resort to this method.

Still befuddles me how badly Twitter has neglected list functionality. On every device/platform, there's a differently-obfuscated way to just see the damn lists you've created, nevermind create them. I get that making lists isn't fun, but they never seemed to try to make them easy to make. The end result is that new users who enthusiastically follow others see a stream of unfiltered shit and end up either just quitting, or obsessively pruning their follow list.

I don't get this as well. The only reason i use Tweetbot instead of the official client is because it allows me to set a list as a custom timeline. This is such a wonderful functionality: i can easily switch between the 'firehose' of everyone i follow (around 700 accounts or so) and a custom timeline that has around 50-100 accounts that i don't want to miss. You get the feeling that the only thing Twitter cares about is building new features (e.g. moments) instead of improving existing features.

I moved to a new city and I wanted to see who I followed that lived there. I had to spend 8 hours learning the API and writing a script to put those people into a list. I shouldn't have to do that.

This feature used to exist in the web client and was removed. I am loathe to say why because my memory is faulty and I wasn't directly involved with it, but IIRC there were (odd to me) privacy concerns and the usage wasn't high.

I am sure there's an endpoint to get the timeline of someone else because tweetdeck had such a feature some time ago.

If you're concerned about API usage limits, just use the API keys of any official client (google them) and enjoy.

Imo they realized it doesnt work for their users core usecases that well. Therefore they removed efforts.

The problem here is in the end that there isnt a easy way for a company to communicate it's product strategy to api users and people are left to reverse engineer it.

It doesn't work for their users' core use-cases because they never made it usable in their core web and mobile products. They don't spend engineering time on making it useful in their core web and mobile products because their users don't use it. See the problem here?

It's like they gauged interest on half-an-MVP of a feature and never bothered to truly complete it and make it actually useful.

Interesting. Really highlights how both sides attack eachother - I'm noticing a large amount of basically accusing the other side of authoritarianism. I guess "the other guys want to take your freedom" is always an easy argument that looks completely valid.

Do not set the created list as public, this generates notifications to every person in the list. Kinda fun to explain afterward :D

I've found that people tend to use public lists as a way to insult people that they don't like. "List of nutjobs", "List of {blankety blanks}", etc.

I've both made (a long while ago!) and been on those lists. Damned if I can find it now, but I would have sworn that at some point, Twitter started dropping the hammer on people that misuse list notifications like that.

>> and a follow limit of 1,000 a day

I only follow under a hundred people and find it cumbersome to keep up. How do you follow more than 1,000 users and manage to keep up with that stream?

You don't.

You jump in occasionally, see what's going on and then continue on with whatever. I follow about 2k people and most of those are acquaintances, some colleagues, etc. The only reasonable way to keep an eye on things is lists or custom searches.

When I'm attending a conference, I add a hashtag search a few weeks in advance and kill it a few days after the event. I can catch all the last minute "who's in town?" or "here are my slides!"

And then lists are key. I have a few set up for specific topics, former colleagues (private), and my local tech community. That way I can stay plugged in regardless of other stuff happening.

When I first started using twitter, I found the upper limit on how many people I could follow without feeling overwhelmed was ~100, but as the years have gone by that maximum has grown to the point where I'm following around 700 people at the moment. Muting heavy retweeters helps a lot.

Depending on how chatty they all are, I think you could reasonably follow around 1,000 people and keep up with it alright. Much more than that and you're just periodically sampling a chaotic timeline you're not really engaged with, though.

Bear with me, as I don't use twitter:

If you mute a heavy retweeter on twitter, isn't that the same as just deleting them? Why continue to follow someone you've muted?

Not exactly the same. There are a few reason I might mute someone (opposed to unfollow):

1) They don't know I've muted them, which can be nice for personal friends that are just too damn chatty.

2) They can still DM me, again useful for closer acquaintances.

3) I'll often mute temporarily, e.g., I'll probably mute several people for a week during the RNC convention, because they'll be much chattier than usual. Or I just recently muted somebody who would not stop with Brexit articles. I care about it, but as a USA citizen, I don't need 70 tweets a day about it.

4) I still see replies to the muted person (from other people I follow). I don't see tweets directed to other people unless I also follow them. So if muted-friend-1 tweets something and unmuted-friend-2 responds to 1, I'll see that tweet and can swipe over to see the full conversation. IOW, I still see "@mutedfriend that's awesome!", whereas if I unfollowed, I would only see responses that purposefully broaden their reach, e.g., ".@mutedfriend blah".

Anyway, not a huge difference, but yes, there are enough small differences that I'll often choose to mute rather than delete/unfollow.

You can mute someone's retweets, while still seeing all tweets directly posted by that person. That's what I was referring to above.

But it can also be useful to just outright temporarily mute someone who's at an event or something and swamping your timeline with irrelevant tweets that you know are timeboxed and will soon return to normal. A 7 day mute or whatever beats unfollowing and forgetting to refollow.

I follow about 7,000 users, most of whom I don't know personally but have followed because we're in the same industry. But I don't ever attempt to read my feed beyond a couple of minutes. If a Tweet from a user I care about gets drowned out by 20 tweets from the randoms I follow...it's no big deal. I follow enough like minded people that many of them will retweet something that I want to see. And I like seeing random stuff from semi-random people...that to me is what Twitter is for.

Many of the accounts I follow only tweet sporadically. Some are weekly, some only at weekends, some in different timezones.

It isn't a novel which is needs to be read from start to finish.

I curate the number of accounts I follow to be exactly 187. That seems to be my sweet spot for Signal to Noise.

You're not. There was a little button on profile pages that did exactly this. I remember them removing it in a hurry when people took notice.

You might be thinking of a similar hack someone made for Instagram. Instagram ended up shutting it down.

Do these lists to default to Private or Public? Want to experiment with this but don't want to send out notifications (if that applies here).