Is Twitter’s ‘For You’ Column the Worst Thing Ever? Yes.

A few days ago, my Twitter for Android application started presenting me with a new UI. My feed is now split up into two columns: For you and Following. Would you like to take a guess on which one Twitter has decided to default for me? I’ll give you a hint. It’s the super f*cking lame option.

The For you column is a combination of tweets you might’ve missed from people you follow, as well as tweets from accounts you don’t follow. They can be recommendations based on accounts you do follow or from accounts that are followed by people you follow. It’s straight up Followception and as someone who is incredibly picky about who I follow because I simply don’t want to see 99.9% of the bullshit on that app, it’s quite annoying that Twitter would opt to default on that column.

From the business standpoint, I totally get it. Instagram and Facebook does the exact same thing, but guess what, what they do totally sucks too and no one likes it. None of it is based on the founding concept of what these platforms are. I sign up for the service, I decide who to follow, and then I’m provided a feed exclusively with those accounts with a few ads sprinkled in. That’s the agreement. But no, these companies think they can come in and start shoving content into my eyeballs that I didn’t sign up to see. Do you sense my frustration yet?

Here’s another issue I’m running across with this concept. All day long during a work week, I’m looking at Tweetdeck, probably seeing about 95%+ of the tweets from the accounts I follow. Obviously, these tweet views aren’t getting counted by whatever system Twitter is using on its mobile app, so when I head back to the app and the first column to pop up is For you, the app starts feeding me tweets that I’ve mostly already seen. It’s again, highly annoying and frankly a big waste of time. For now, I have to open the app, click on the Following column and go about my life. There is always the nuclear option, which actually isn’t sounding all that bad right now with the stacking pile of crap Twitter is doing to users (lol, paying for this nonsense) and 3rd-party devs.

As soon as my football team’s season is over (hopefully with the Lombardi), I am soooo out the mess that is Twitter right now.