What I Give Twitter

I am Twitter user #615,723, and have been a member for nine years as of January 8th.

In that time I have given Twitter 34,421 tweets.

I have received 9,693 followers. I follow 918 people as a broad indicator of my interests. I am on 559 lists.

I read Twitter as a stream using Tweetbot, which syncs my read position across multiple devices. I retweet frequently, quote tweet less frequently and reply often.

According to Twitter Analytics, my follower’s interests are in technology, tech news, comedy and music.

I give Twitter a lot. Based on all the heuristics coming in, it should know what interests me, what catches my attention, who I like to read, who I don’t and who I like to talk to. It should know enough to assemble for me a feed that is based on what I most likely will want to read. It should be able to summarize the most important things I missed. It should know where I left off across first-party clients.

And yet it doesn’t.

I’m nine years into Twitter, and I feel that it only lets advertisers know about me, which I don’t see the results of since I use a third party client. What I get in return is a reverse chronological list of 140 character fragments that I have to pay a third party to see because their first-party clients don’t provide read-position syncing.

I’ve known Twitter nine years. I feel like they just met me for the first time every time I use it.