DISQUS

odd time signatures: Tracking the Swarm

  • Amy Gahran · 11 months ago
    Did Twitter ever explain why they turned off tracking?

    - Amy
  • Karoli · 11 months ago
    Yes. They have said it's a scaling problem. It's really more about forming a business model around a very valuable stream of information, as they indicated in September at BearHug camp in an interview with Steve Gillmor.
  • tweetip · 11 months ago
    @karoli said: "If you just send out self-promoting links and aren't interested in conversation when u follow, I not only won't follow, I will block."

    If one has access to the firehose, blocking is a myth. Twitter had many reasons for turning off the firehose. They had many reasons for turning off track.

    With new architecture & ToS, many reasons will be absent & your blocking will be enforced :)
  • Karoli · 11 months ago
    Well, I disagree. When I tracked, I tracked users as well as terms. Was
    easy enough to choose to track users I wanted to read no matter what and
    scan the timeline when I felt like it for other things.

    So now I'm stuck having to follow back and block the idiots, something I
    never dealt with before.
  • tweetip · 11 months ago
    you missed my point :)
  • Karoli · 11 months ago
    No, I didn't :)
  • briantroy · 11 months ago
    What? Unicorns? NOOOOO!!!! But I love unicorns :)
    It is amazing the nuances we will bring to ensure we disagree. And as I've said repeatedly over the past two days - I don't think we really disagree.
    The power of your anecdotes is obvious and compelling - and they are, in fact, powered by a scope of trackable data that is very large. But, as I've said on multiple occasions, I agree that the wider the scope of the trackable data the greater the potential value.
    My point isn't that less scope is good, it is that you can achieve value (discovery and participation in real time - mobile or otherwise) with a limited trackable scope. I don't suggest we should abandon the effort to have services/networks "open up" and share the full data.
    All I suggest is that we open up the track community to anyone working on solving the problem(s) of real time information discovery and participation. Make it inclusive - and not bear hug anyone who says - "hey we can do something here, even if we don't have the fire-hose".

    So we agree - but we don't. I'd love to be involved in the track community - but since I don't have a fire-hose of data to create solutions on... I guess I can't. I believe that my non-track limited information discovery and participation solutions will help the track community gain the leverage required to get the services to "open up". Hope that is enough.
  • tweetip · 11 months ago
    time correction: @scribeofflight 1st tweet at 02:35:33 EST
  • Karoli · 11 months ago
    Thanks, I'll correct that in the post.