Category: News

Get out of your Twitter bubble and into someone else’s. Today, a very interesting Twitter tool is rolled out, which most of you, Twitter users would find very cool.

‘Vicariously’ app lets you snoop on other people’s Twitter timelines, and it finally lets you find out what Trump’s Twitter feed looks like (if you really want to).

This tool is created by ilk co-founder Jake Harding. One of the main options of Vicariously is that it lets you create Twitter lists automatically based on the following of other Twitter users. So if you want to know what scrolling through Donald Trump, Kanye West, J.K. Rowling, or Hozier’s Twitter feeds might be like, this app can give you an idea.

As Jake Harding, The founder of Vicariously stated in his latest tweet, he has been thinking about ways to overhaul Twitter experience, so he built Vicariously, and he is pretty happy with the end results. It’s an easy way to create (and sync) lists based on the follows of another user.

 What does Vicariously do?

As mentioned earlier, one of the main functions of this app is that it offers the easiest way to create Twitter lists based on the following of other users. In addition, Vicariously syncs lists daily to ensure they’re always up to date.

Regarding further details by Mashable, The app doesn’t just let you straight up snoop on who someone follows, though. Vicariously also lets you create lists that combine the follows of multiple accounts, only show the shared follows of multiple accounts, only show the follows of one account that aren’t also followed by another, or only show the following that different accounts don’t have in common.

It further allows you to pin your lists to the top of your home timeline for easy access, for a bit of extra convenience 

Vicariously seems like a pretty nifty app, but it may not be long for this world if it doesn’t grow up quickly. Some people have expressed concern about privacy and complained that others using the app spammed them with Twitter notifications telling them they’d been added to various lists.

The app has been out for just a couple of weeks, and it now allows free users to create private lists, lets people stop others from creating lists based on who they follow, and lets people prevent others from adding them to lists.

What is Twitter’s reaction to Vicariously? 

Twitter has expressed that it is impressed by the idea of Vicariously and how it works, but since some users have expressed privacy concerns, Twitter has also started to see the bad effects of the app.

Twitter told TechCrunch that while it “loves that Vicariously uses Lists to help people find new accounts to follow and get new perspectives,” the app violates its rules concerning automation.

“We’ve reached out to them to find a way to bring the app into compliance with our rules,” said Twitter. Ultimately, we all hope that Twitter sorts out their issues with the app and lets users make the best use of Vicariously to use Twitter in a much more useful and interesting way. 

This news is interesting but still not officially announced. As some sources say, Twitter is apparently testing out a new set of app icons on iOS, and a new intro animation when users open the app.

This news is spread while Twitter is still coping with the huge disaster of getting hacked by professional hackers, which manipulated the accounts of some of the most prominent people on the social network.

Twitter appears to be considering offering the users additional choices for the Twitter app icon on iOS home screens. This news has emerged based on a new survey sent out to members of its Twitter Insiders beta program.

Twitter has offered four app icons to get feedback on which ones to officially roll out. One of the icons is the current default Twitter for iOS icon. The goal of the survey is to figure out which icons Twitter users prefer, and the results could affect which icons are offered in the Twitter app.

Many users sat that this update might stay just as a test and Of course, it’s also possible that Twitter leaves things as they are and doesn’t add new icons

Twitter’s new splash screen

Besides the icons, Twitter is also seen to be testing a new splash screen. The splash screen looks very cool and splashy, which is very unlike Twitter. It is known to play it conservatively when it comes to design and colors.

As I mentioned earlier, there are still no official statements of any of the two updates, and they might not be globally rolled out and stay as only beta updates, which would go away soon.

Twitter yesterday announced that it had removed a video, which was a campaign video over a copyright complaint.

Linkin Park said that the band did not authorize the use of their song “In the end” by the Trump campaign. The song “In the End” was featured in the background of the video, which included images of President Trump and excerpts from his inauguration speech.

Twitter later clarified the deletion of the video in a statement:

“Per our copyright policy, we respond to valid copyright complaints sent to us by the copyright owner or their authorized representative,” a Twitter spokesperson said in an email to The Verge.

On July 19th the verified Linkin Park Twitter account tweeted:

“Linkin Park did not and did not endorse Trump nor authorize his organization to use any of our music. A cease and desist has been issued.”

The video campaign tweet was originally tweeted White House social media director Dan Scavino.

Twitter labeled the tweet and left a notice on the post, saying: “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.”

This is not the first time that Trump’s tweets get flagged by Twitter, or he reacts to tweets that violate Twitter’s policies.

For example, as pointed out by The Verge, they were two other cases lately, which provoked the public anger and made Twitter flag or remove Trump’s tweets.

Last month, it disabled a four-minute campaign video that included images of George Floyd, the Minneapolis man who died May 25th after a police officer kneeled on his neck. Facebook and Instagram removed posts from their platforms that featured the video. The president called the removal “illegal,” in a tweet, but Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responded: “Not true and not illegal. This was pulled because we got a DMCA complaint from the copyright holder.” Trump has had other tweets flagged by Twitter that it said ran afoul of its content policies. In May, the social media platform added a label to a tweet where Trump warned “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” because Twitter said the tweet violated its policy against glorifying violence. A June tweet by the president featuring a doctored video was labeled as “manipulated media.”