Things I want from a social media client:
I want to filter content in not just out, I want to do it by:
- …people I don’t want to miss and the conversations they’re having with others I follow but don’t need to always pay attention to.
- …keywords, but also give something like word2vec a training dictionary of documents important to me (eg full text of my browsing history, zotero library, and ebook library), find words related to the words I want (eg, tell it I want “open government” and it’ll also find “open data”, “civic tech”, and “transparency”).
- …event- and time-based topics
- Surface ideas and conversations that are trending in my network.
- Newsworthy events
- Long-tail coverage of acute events (ie hurricane and then recovery coverage)
- Time-delayed (save spoilers until I want them)
- …serendipity
- Show me things I didn’t think I wanted but might be compelling (based on interest within my network, random sample, &c).
- …global/nested filters.
- Some filters I want to generate a specific feed, other filters I want to be able to apply to other filters (eg remove sports tweets from all feeds, always include cute capybara photos, even in my metaphysics feed.)
- …surface new people who seem pertinent to my interests or close to my network. The joy of young Twitter was finding new people by seeing who the people I talk to often—my career since 2009 is built from this network—I want to be sure I do not miss new upcoming folks in my fields because I missed the signal in the noise.
- generative twitter lists based on bio+content of what folks tweet about (eg, notice retweets by accounts I follow of accounts I don’t who list government transparency in their profile or tweet about it often and add to a list for future reference).
- Record of the tweet or set of tweets that prompted me to block someone.
- Notes on why I block/mute someone.
- Sharable blocklist (Block Together, but annotated).
- Record all @-replies from abusive accounts, even if I decide I don’t want them in my timeline, so I can refer to them if I need to.
- The full history of my timeline so i can search it later
- Remember what I’ve read/clicked on so I can remember where I found things (and credit them properly!)
- Remember across devices—probably a server-side web app.
- Remember my filters as-is, but also allow me to refilter as my algorithm evolves.
- Storify, but with the data under my own control.