Yeah, I've long thought that the syndication that happens via server-server communication could be replaced with a smarter client. As far as UI goes, Twitter seems more like a browsable network, e.g. @ IDs, follower/follows lists, and those features seem to be key, not the specific transport. Would like to see something like Mastodon but based on RSS.
I've been looking, and to a point, coding what I actually want from twitter along these lines, but I really don't think that type of client will ever exist for general consumption. Heck, finding a twitter client that actually goes back a day and grabs all the tweets since your last look is pretty hard (even some that claim they will don't. Twitter's crackdown on clients pretty much ended a good chunk of the innovation.
So you pivot. Implement a feature that a niche will really like, but that the official Twitter app won't implement because it complicates things for those that don't care and fills a fairly small niche.
For example, I'd love to have a client that lets me filter extremely powerfully. I should be able to filter by any field (for example, filter out whose source is Ad.ly because it's all ads), use regular expressions, etc.
I think some apps come close, but I don't think any are quite as powerful as I'd like. Even if one is, there are plenty more niches to fill. An iPhone client that's not as pretty or feature-packed, but which loads instantly, for example.
This could get me to switch to Seesmic, and maybe even learn to program, too.
I see twitter client after twitter client that reproduces the majority of the functionality of its competitors, but each with one unique difference.
It'd be great to not have to always be checking out new clients and deciding if the utility of its unique feature is worth the effort of using another app.
I'd love to see this built own. A live-updating, clean, and light weight web based twitter client doesn't exist. I'd subscribe for a few bucks a month to use it.
Noah, sorry you're seeing lack of response here. The UI is nice, but I think the hardest problem is network effects and handling of scale. I was wondering, can't you bring your experience and input to one of the existing efforts like BlueSky, or Mastodon clients, and so on, so people see everyone is gathering around one of the solutions and can feel confident moving themselves?
In the current situation, more fragmentation only makes Twitter stronger.
I wonder about the potential for Twitter to improve as a product with a little shakeup/different priorities.
Stuff like not needing to login to browse or a better system for longer tweets/threads. I'd also be a fan of a very fast/lightweight interface, something closer to nitter.net.
The options this creates are super accessible to non-technical people. You can go on the app store right now and take your pick of bsky clients, and you can browse/search different algos from within the app and keep a list of your favorites and swap between them, it's all very user-friendly
Most of the biggest complaints people have about twitter are client-side problems. So just having an ecosystem of clients (and the competitive pressure that puts on the official client) makes the experience way better
Good news! There's a Twitter alternative that's open source and practically requires you to look under the hood: Mastodon.
In the general case I agree with your sentiment and this is why I believe open source and self hosted alternatives are important, because they are the escape hatch from all the problems inherent in corporate platforms.
These kind of things need to be public goods instead of private companies. For that reason, I'm much more inclined to bet that Mastodon or some other community owned venture will be the true successor to Twitter.
Somebody please rewrite that thing over URLs, static site generators, rss and cloud functions. We would loose search (delegated to internet search engines) and perhaps hashtags (at least for a while) but it would be largely the same for the main features and scalable without need of federation.
You would still not be able to edit tweets to some extent, and we would be back to be able to get just the last x tweets for a given user, but for sure we would stop this madness.
There are a lot of tradeoffs to be made, but the core functionality to get things working for the core use cases would still be there.
Developers would also have to make clients that work with both, so the users get used to using that alternative in the same client. Plus the client maker would have more leverage over Twitter, especially if it's a big one.
Seems like what you should be asking for is Mastodon, but with performance improvements and improved search.
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