[HN Gopher] Show HN: Kizie - Twitter for web, reimagined
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       Show HN: Kizie - Twitter for web, reimagined
        
       Author : thelifeofrishi
       Score  : 52 points
       Date   : 2021-09-16 10:26 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (kizie.co)
 (TXT) w3m dump (kizie.co)
        
       | pelasaco wrote:
       | The edit feature, i think is problematic. Imagine you post
       | something, X people liked it, then you edit the post changing the
       | whole meaning of the message and the people that liked it before
       | changes are still be there.. liking it. That's problematic IMO,
       | when people get canceled because they liked something on Twitter,
       | that they actually didn't.
        
         | XIVMagnus wrote:
         | I guess this is why twitter doesn't allow edits. I never
         | thought about it this way.
        
           | blowski wrote:
           | I believe Twitter also relies on read only Tweets as a
           | performance optimisation.
        
         | danpalmer wrote:
         | Twitter do not allow editing in their API, so all this app is
         | doing is _not posting it_ for a short period of time after you
         | click submit to allow you to edit if you need to. No one will
         | see the tweet until that time period is over.
        
           | pelasaco wrote:
           | Did you get this information from:
           | 
           | "Undo or redo a tweet Discard your last tweet or re-edit it,
           | quickly with shortcuts" or are you just guessing it based on
           | the twitter API?
        
             | satvikpendem wrote:
             | It is well known that Twitter does not allow editing
             | tweets. Any apps that ostensibly do that are simply
             | delaying the tweet or deleting and reposting it.
        
             | danpalmer wrote:
             | Neither, it's just fairly clear to me that this is not the
             | sort of feature that a third party client to a service can
             | typically implement if there is no support for it in the
             | official client (completely separate from this being
             | Twitter).
             | 
             | As another example, Gmail has an "undo" button on sending
             | an email, but other email clients don't (mostly). Why?
             | Because email doesn't have the concept of un-doing a send,
             | so the only way they can implement this at the "protocol
             | level" is to... not, and to implement it entirely in the
             | client with a delay.
        
           | thelifeofrishi wrote:
           | You're absolutely right :)
        
         | thelifeofrishi wrote:
         | Kizie doesn't edit your existing tweets, even Twitter
         | doesn't/can't do that :D
         | 
         | Kizie just makes it easier to discard/redo your last sent tweet
         | within 10 seconds of posting it, before implementing I thought
         | it wouldn't be useful but I've personally used it plenty of
         | times. It does help, try it out and let me know maybe
        
       | emptyparadise wrote:
       | I hope Twitter won't ruin this.
        
         | thelifeofrishi wrote:
         | That's one of the best things I've heard about Kizie :)
        
       | Y-bar wrote:
       | I don't see anything about tools to deal with harassment and
       | trolls. Any online platform, especially public or semi-public
       | ones, will have to deal with it. I wonder what you have done.
        
         | thelifeofrishi wrote:
         | The only feature that'll help with this issue in Kizie is
         | "Muted Words" but Twitter has that too.
         | 
         | Thanks for pointing out the problem, the focus haven't been
         | there but I see the problem, I've noted it and will plan for
         | it. Thanks :)
        
       | waspight wrote:
       | Is this a one man project? How did you go about design? Existing
       | component library of some sort?
        
         | thelifeofrishi wrote:
         | Yes, solo founder.
         | 
         | I am also a designer :), all custom components based on
         | Tailwind
        
       | tasubotadas wrote:
       | While the people from the US or Japan might not agree, the only
       | way to improve Twitter is to delete it.
        
         | blowski wrote:
         | This is a bit of a HN cliche. Twitter can be great as long as
         | you stay away from the toxic threads and you know when to
         | switch off. I use it to banter about football and the like.
        
         | thelifeofrishi wrote:
         | I love Twitter
        
         | adamrezich wrote:
         | what context am I missing for mentioning Japan in this context?
        
         | eigengrau5150 wrote:
         | Twitter is like the rest of Silicon Valley: there's nothing
         | wrong with it that can't be fixed by doing things Ellen
         | Ripley's way. (It's the only way to be sure.)
        
       | thelifeofrishi wrote:
       | Hi fellow misfits, I'm Rishi(https://twitter.com/thelifeofrishi),
       | I have been working on a better version of Twitter at
       | https://kizie.co, let me know what you think
       | 
       | --
       | 
       | Tech
       | 
       | Next.js, Vercel, Supabase, Tailwind, ah yep that's pretty much it
       | 
       | --
       | 
       | Why?
       | 
       | Because Twitter.com is cluttered, has ads that no one likes,
       | lacks UX and can be better, Kizie.co intends to fix all of these.
       | 
       | --
       | 
       | Whats' in Kizie.co that Twitter.com doesn't have?
       | 
       | - Undo tweet, you get time to discard/re-send last sent tweet
       | 
       | - Analytics, you get stats of your tweets so you know which
       | tweets are working and to increase engagement
       | 
       | - Quick media preview, preview photos/videos in feeds in full
       | aspect ratio quickly on hover, Twitter.com is still trying to fix
       | the issue :D
       | 
       | - Reader mode for links, my personal favorite, links in your
       | timeline can be viewed in a beautiful reader view in the app
       | itself
       | 
       | - Save links for later
       | 
       | - Plus Kizie has almost all of the Twitter.com features
       | 
       | - Me
       | 
       | ---
       | 
       | I'm the only one working on it, and so I assure you there can be
       | bugs in the app :D, if you come across one just let me know on
       | Twitter.
       | 
       | I have been constantly using Kizie on Web and through macOS app
       | since last couple months now and I think it's good and stable
       | enough for daily use at this moment. I've been also constantly
       | working on UX and adding useful features, currently a tool to
       | convert Tweet to image - https://kizie.co/tweet-image (standalone
       | rn but will be available for Pro users and could be used from the
       | feeds). Have bunch of ideas to go live :)
       | 
       | That's it, let me know what you think of it!
        
         | monetus wrote:
         | How do you feel the engagement metrics will play out? They make
         | me worried. Also, kudos for making this!
        
           | thelifeofrishi wrote:
           | Since I haven't dived fully into it I am not sure how it'll
           | turn out, my idea with engagement context is to show users
           | what's working for them and whats' not so they know how to do
           | it
           | 
           | This will include maths and lots of data processing but it'll
           | eventually be there in Kizie at some point
        
         | eigengrau5150 wrote:
         | All you're doing is putting lipstick on a pig. This isn't even
         | a better Nitter <https://nitter.net/about>.
         | 
         | If you want to do something useful, I'd like to see you create
         | a Twitter look-alike that pulls from members' RSS/Atom/JSON
         | feeds rather than letting them post directly. No likes, no
         | reshares, no comments. Just pure feed aggregation in reverse
         | chronological order like the Demiurge intended.
         | 
         | We need more webrings and sites like Nightfall City
         | <https://nightfall.city/>, not FOSS developers reskinning a
         | parasocial media site and not getting a dime in payment.
        
           | thelifeofrishi wrote:
           | I know it's not as good as nitter(didn't know about it)
           | 
           | But I'm trying :), I see nitter has 22 contributors, Kizie
           | has only one person working, give me some time I'll make it
           | as better as I can
        
             | eigengrau5150 wrote:
             | No matter what you do, Kizie will be worthless as long as
             | it depends on Twitter. Twitter is nothing but the men's
             | room wall of the internet. Its content is nothing but
             | variations on the following theme:
             | 
             | Here I sit, brokenhearted / I came to shit and only farted
        
           | selfer564 wrote:
           | Comments like yours are such a stain to the community. If you
           | have nothing constructive to say, keep it to yourself.
        
             | new_guy wrote:
             | They're not wrong. What even is this? A monetised front for
             | Twitter? Not even it's own site? It's garbage, sites like
             | this are the 'stain to the community', not the people
             | pointing it out.
        
               | selfer564 wrote:
               | What an incredible take. So we should never build
               | alternative UI's for X? It always has to be original
               | software in every regard?
               | 
               | Unreal, get out of here with your bottom of the barrel
               | thinking. Don't trash on someone's work because you lack
               | creative thinking. It's pathetic and unwanted.
        
           | croisillon wrote:
           | You seem to be kind of shadowban (not sure what the proper
           | term is), you might want to write an email to the hn
           | moderation to clear that up
        
             | eigengrau5150 wrote:
             | I can't be bothered. If they want to censor me that's their
             | prerogative. I'm not paying to shitpost here, and I'm not
             | getting paid to be here either; I'm just a guest.
        
       | sebastianconcpt wrote:
       | How is this platform making impossible to censor users
       | guaranteeing freedom of expression?
        
         | satvikpendem wrote:
         | This is just a frontend client for Twitter, that's like asking
         | how a frontend client for Hacker News allows you to bypass dang
         | and moderators; it doesn't.
        
         | thelifeofrishi wrote:
         | That wasn't in the roadmap till now, I'll think about it but
         | it's little hard to achieve this since Twitter controls the
         | data here :)
        
       | huhtenberg wrote:
       | I suspect it's not supposed to look like this -
       | https://i.imgur.com/hX6YMgb.png
        
         | thelifeofrishi wrote:
         | It's not, might be adblocker or Firefox strict setting.
        
           | huhtenberg wrote:
           | An update - It renders OK now, without making any changes to
           | the setup on my end.
           | 
           | PS. This is indeed in Firefox with uBlock set to block all
           | domains except for kizie.co, edgecastcdn.net and twimg.com.
        
             | thelifeofrishi wrote:
             | uBlock and some other adblockers might block twitter URLs,
             | I had issue with 1Blocker app as well which I discussed
             | with their team and is now fixed.
             | 
             | Firefox strict privacy setting completely blocks twitter
             | CDN urls, no way to fix it I suppose.
             | 
             | Thanks for taking the extra effort, appreciated :)
        
           | schleck8 wrote:
           | I have this issue too, with Chrome on Android and a DNS
           | adblocker. Might be the image host or it doesn't load for a
           | different reason
        
             | thelifeofrishi wrote:
             | Can you please try opening
             | https://kizie/co/YOUR_TWITTER_HANDLE and report what you
             | see, thanks in advance!
        
               | robin_reala wrote:
               | All images coming from Twitter are broken. Firefox is
               | counting images coming from https://pbs.twimg.com/ as
               | trackers and stopping the load. This is with Enhanced
               | Tracking Protection turned on. You can confirm this by
               | clicking on the shield in the address bar, then clicking
               | on Social Media Trackers.
        
               | thelifeofrishi wrote:
               | Yeah that's a known issue and happens on any app that
               | used Twitter API when Firefox enhanced protection is
               | enabled, it would work on balanced settings.
        
               | DecoPerson wrote:
               | Blank in all cases for me. With adblocker
               | enabled/disabled. With Dark Reader enabled/disabled. On
               | the homepage vs /my_twitter_handle. In Chrome, Edge,
               | Firefox.
               | 
               | I'm in Australia. I see no errors in the developer
               | console, or the network tab. Inspecting element reveals a
               | bunch of divs, with no meaningful content (essentially
               | empty) in the middle.
        
               | huhtenberg wrote:
               | I am the original complainer and https://kizie.co/spacex
               | renders perfectly fine.
        
               | schleck8 wrote:
               | i turned the dns blocker off and now it works
        
           | danpalmer wrote:
           | I have the same thing in Firefox. FWIW, I don't generally
           | turn them off for new products that I'm not familiar with so
           | if I hadn't come from this thread on HN I would probably have
           | bailed out in a few seconds.
        
       | barrenko wrote:
       | I'll try it, Twitter is impossible to browse sequentially.
        
         | thelifeofrishi wrote:
         | thanks :)
         | 
         | If you have feedback please let me know via Twitter DM
        
           | barrenko wrote:
           | Sure, you can have my money just by making reading better
           | e.g. -
           | 
           | List of who I'm following is basically buried, if I had a
           | couple of "balloons" at the top of the feed with top 5- 10
           | people I follow (according to some algorithm) and I can click
           | then read, some sort of that would be swell.
           | 
           | I don't care about the general feed, I care about insightful
           | people, currently it's easier for me to do it via bookmarks
           | of select profiles, that's my twitter client.
        
             | thelifeofrishi wrote:
             | I've focussed on making reading experience better, try it
             | out :)
             | 
             | Your suggestion on tweets from insightful people is
             | interesting, I can see Twitter lists can do that too, I'll
             | think about it, thanks.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | paulcole wrote:
       | > a beautiful reader mode UI
       | 
       | What do you think is beautiful about the UI? What other beautiful
       | UIs inspired your design?
        
         | thelifeofrishi wrote:
         | Less clutter, simple is beautiful I guess if I may say so as a
         | maker
         | 
         | But if you think it's not then sure please let me know your
         | definition of "beautiful", I'll try to work on it :)
        
           | barrenko wrote:
           | It's cool and in fact "pretty", but I think you need some
           | sort of visual "demarcation" between posts.
        
             | thelifeofrishi wrote:
             | Noted, I've been feeling it too lately, will work on it :)
        
       | superkuh wrote:
       | Nope. It's about equal to modern twitter. All I get is a blank
       | screen indicating you want me to execute untrusted code from your
       | domain. Twitter at least tells me that it's blocking me
       | intentionally for not running it's code though.
        
         | thelifeofrishi wrote:
         | I'm an indie dev. who built this on weekends, 200 active
         | visitors gets me excited, taking users data and selling it to
         | someone doesn't :)
        
           | superkuh wrote:
           | It's not that I don't trust you specifically. I have no
           | reason to monetize my interactions with you either but would
           | you run an executable email attachment if I sent one to you?
           | 
           | Please consider making a graceful fallback to an actual
           | website even if it's only to tell non-JS users to go away.
        
             | waspight wrote:
             | Are you comparing running a random exe file with executing
             | javascript on the web?
        
             | thelifeofrishi wrote:
             | Makes sense :)
        
       | Brajeshwar wrote:
       | Hey Rishi, The Landing page was pretty blank (the twitter embed
       | part) when NextDNS is enabled. I think any other AdBlockers will
       | block it. You might want to check it out.
        
         | thelifeofrishi wrote:
         | Thanks for reporting, it doesn't use Twitter's script but the
         | API data, thought what you're saying is possible
         | 
         | If possible, can you please DM me the console screenshot at
         | https:/twitter.com/thelifeofrishi
        
       | sergiotapia wrote:
       | It takes balls to launch something that depends 100% on Twitter.
       | What's to stop them from cutting you off at whatever whim they
       | have?
        
         | thelifeofrishi wrote:
         | I was prepared for that even before I started work on Kizie,
         | nothing to lose :)
        
       | p4bl0 wrote:
       | I read the feature list and I don't really see anything that is
       | not already on the standard twitter web ui. What are the actual
       | addition feature-wise?
        
         | thelifeofrishi wrote:
         | Hi, Twitter.com doesn't have these, I literally checked like 20
         | seconds back :)
         | 
         | - Undo tweet, you get time to discard/re-send last sent tweet -
         | Analytics, you get stats of your tweets so you know which
         | tweets are working and to increase engagement - Quick media
         | preview, preview photos/videos in feeds in full aspect ratio
         | quickly on hover, Twitter.com is still trying to fix the issue
         | :D - Reader mode for links, my personal favorite, links in your
         | timeline can be viewed in a beautiful reader view in the app
         | itself - Save links for later
        
           | p4bl0 wrote:
           | Okay for undo/redo. I mean, I can delete and repost a tweet
           | with correction, but the UI isn't made for that. However I
           | have statistics on Twitter, for each tweet individually or
           | for my timeline globally with top tweets per view/engagements
           | etc per period of time.
           | 
           | I think I understand better what you call "media preview", I
           | guess that can be useful for some.
           | 
           | The remaining features you listed are features that I want
           | from my browser (which has them) not from the app, but that's
           | also a matter of personal preferences I guess :).
        
             | thelifeofrishi wrote:
             | - Undo/redo comment, I agree but Kizie makes it easier.
             | 
             | - Statistics, twitter only shows per tweet, Kizie(makes it
             | better) gives it all in single place, and its' going to
             | have insights soon(per period, engagement data, which
             | tweets worked etc.)
             | 
             | Thanks, even if it solves some and not all problems I am
             | happy with it. It's a continuous effort to add things and
             | make existing stuff stable
             | 
             | If there's something you've always wanted out of Twitter
             | then let me know, would be happy to add :)
        
               | p4bl0 wrote:
               | Okay :). For stats, I'm not sure I understand what you
               | listed that I cannot already have using
               | https://analytics.twitter.com/.
        
               | thelifeofrishi wrote:
               | Right now nothing, but there will be engagement insights
               | based on this data
        
           | Insanity wrote:
           | You can enable analytics on the standard twitter website
           | though.
           | 
           | But the others might still be useful for some!
        
       | cheeaun wrote:
       | Would be useful for me if this supports lists.
        
         | thelifeofrishi wrote:
         | Lists is on plan, will be there in the next update :)
        
           | cheeaun wrote:
           | That would be cool :)
           | 
           | Also, I feel like there seems to be a lag when clicking on
           | the tabs. Currently using it on Mobile Safari iOS 15. Maybe
           | I'm expecting native-like perf or something :D
        
             | thelifeofrishi wrote:
             | The thought of creating Kizie iOS app has crossed my mind
             | like 23 times :D, someday
        
       | ageitgey wrote:
       | Looks like twitter isn't happy about all the users viewing your
       | page:
       | 
       | {"message":"Rate limit
       | exceeded","code":88,"allErrors":[{"message":"Rate limit
       | exceeded","code":88}],"twitterReply":{"errors":[{"message":"Rate
       | limit exceeded","code":88}]},"statusCode":429}
        
         | thelifeofrishi wrote:
         | There's too much traffic on the site right now because of this
         | post, it should be back in a couple of minutes :)
        
           | unclebucknasty wrote:
           | How will you manage this if you get widespread adoption/use?
        
             | thelifeofrishi wrote:
             | Actually it was an issue where I was making API request for
             | the homepage for rendering some tweets, huge traffic caused
             | the reach to limit, bad decision, it's fixed now :)
        
               | unclebucknasty wrote:
               | I understand. I was assuming that you were also using the
               | Twitter API for the product itself, such that rate-
               | limiting would affect API requests _at some point_ as you
               | scale up your users.
        
               | thelifeofrishi wrote:
               | Signed in users use user's keys so each user has it's own
               | rate-limit separate from the app context.
               | 
               | And yes, you're right, there are rate-limits for
               | endpoints in Twitter API, I've optimized the app to be in
               | rate-limits and still be able to make the most of it.
               | 
               | For ex. I recently added Messages in Kizie. Twitter API's
               | Messages endpoint has a rate-limit of 15 requests per 15
               | min window. Really really low for something like
               | messages. On top of that each request returns at most 50
               | messages(not conversations).
               | 
               | How Kizie handles it is it makes 3 requests on initial
               | load and then checks for new messages every 2.5 minutes.
               | It was kinda tricky to do all of it reliably and I'm
               | still trying optimise it more for better experience :)
        
               | unclebucknasty wrote:
               | Ah, understood. I asked because years ago I played with
               | the Twitter API a bit and found its rate limits pretty
               | restrictive, so was wondering if that had changed or, if
               | not, how you were working around it.
               | 
               | Hopefully your users will get tons of value from the
               | other improvements, such that these small trade-offs you
               | have to make for rate limits are insignificant to the
               | overall UX upgrade.
               | 
               | Best of luck on customer acquisition, and congrats on
               | what you've built thus far--no small thing for a one
               | person operation!
        
               | satvikpendem wrote:
               | You could actually store the tweet contents yourself and
               | render them to look like the Twitter UI. That would help
               | to not get rate limited.
        
               | thelifeofrishi wrote:
               | That's exactly how I fixed the rate-limit issue on
               | landing page :)
        
       | danpalmer wrote:
       | This looks great, solid list of features.
       | 
       | I use Tweetbot and have done for many years, mostly because of a
       | feature set like this. Is Kizie intending to compete with other
       | third-party clients, or is it intending to target platforms like
       | the web/Android where established apps like Tweetbot aren't
       | available?
        
         | thelifeofrishi wrote:
         | Thanks!
         | 
         | Kizie isn't intending to compete with any other app, it's
         | intended to be user's Twitter app with flawless experience, if
         | there's any feature that could possibly uplift your Twitter
         | experience then I want to add that in Kizie, possibly on
         | multiple platforms too :)
        
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       (page generated 2021-09-16 23:02 UTC)