This bot unrolls Twitter threads and turns them into readable blog posts
For as much as its users love to hate on their platform of choice, Twitter occasionally really comes through with a deep dive on a hot topic that provides actual, meaningful insight. Such an event is almost enough to remind us why we all fritter our lives away on there to begin with.
Remember when we used to blog? Like, we issued thoughts in sentences and paragraphs instead of a series of social media convulsions? It used to happen! This is kind of like that.
A Twitter bot called Thread Reader App (@threadreaderapp) can take your barely readable Twitter rant of choice and transform it into normal text served up on a sparse, normal looking page. You might have noticed these “unrolled” threads — they’re popping up all over.
To get your tweetstorm of choice hand-delivered in blog form, you just need to reply to a thread with @threadreaderapp and the keyword “unroll.” While Twitter threads that do the whole 1/347 numbering thing read kind of weirdly, normal chunks of text get sewn together into something very legible indeed.
The creator also offers a Chrome extension that turns this process into a simple series of clicks. (We haven’t tested it so, as with all things, download at your own risk.) Really feeling it? You can donate to the project on Patreon.
Of course, for every good Twitter thread there are 100 of threads of boring dudes mansplaining. Or 200 of barely sentient conspiracy theorists regurgitating the delusion du jour. If the Thread Reader App’s trending page is any indication, the Pizzagate crowd is loving the option to put tweetstorms into a readable, blog-like format too.
While we may not all believe in a clandestine globalist takeover at the hands of the illuminati, I think we can all agree that it’s nice to have more readable Twitter threads!
Featured Image: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch