Probably because Twitter permissions granularity is very sparse. Last time I checked it was just read the whole account or read/write the whole account.
Thus, to create private lists on your account they need the permission to write.
The rollout got stopped when a senior executive was following a porn star. I forget whether his wife actually saw that via this feature or whether he was simply just afraid of it happening, but the feature got cancelled.
Tweetdeck used to have this feature, there was a "Home" option on the row at the bottom of the user profile modal. I was disappointed when it was removed, it was a super useful feature and worked on desktop!
If this app supports seeing the chosen user's public messages from their perspective, it'd be a great way to experience what it's like for certain high-profile accounts that get trolled and dogpiled all the time.
I welcome people making applications such as these that show us just how public information is and how little we truly appreciate that fact (I assume many will find this creepy).
There's many areas to be concerned about regarding privacy in the 21st century, but not this.
> show us just how public information is
Information we choose to broadcast to the world on a platform designed for broadcasting to the world.
> find this creepy
Strangers can see my public list of who I follow, and can see the public posts of those people I follow. The people I follow can choose to make their posts not public if they wish, and I can choose to make my profile not public so that strangers can't see who I follow, if I wish. Not creepy, really.
The best way use case I can think of is to view my own feed anonymously. It’s all public information (whom I follow etc) so I should not need to be auth’d.
I think the problem here is that many people now use the practice to follow people and than mute them, so their tweets doesn't get shown in the feed (or he doesn't get notified if they like/retweet/comment them). So a person which officially follows millions of people could have muted them all and his feed is always empty. In my opinion is a good idea though.
I think it's brilliant. We too often look at things from our own bubble. The deeper the experience will be the better. It should not be limited to Twitter to be even more effective. Of course it can be used in a way that someone thinks privacy is harmed. I personally would feel honoured if someone took the time to look at the world trough my eyes! I would normally need to write a book for that to get that much braintime from a person.
Downloaded the app and tried it. Links don't work, pictures don't show, there's no conversation view... This isn't becoming someone on Twitter, it's viewing a non-interactive and incomplete screenshot from over their shoulder. That makes it much, much less useful for its stated purpose. Too bad.
The fact that I think this is the worst idea in the world might be the very reason this could be huge. I thought friendster, myspace and facebook enabling people with 15min of fame by displaying their personal lives on the net was the worst idea in the world.
I did think the way Google handled search was the best idea in the world, so go figure.
