It’s been almost four months since I began participating in the…um, Twittersphere (shoot me now) and needless to say I’m pretty hooked like the majority of its members judging by its continuous growth. It really is a great tool. I used to think it wasn’t a viable means of connecting with new people but how wrong I was.
That said, it really is quite minimalist in its features and let’s be honest, there’s not much to it. I appreciate that one of the reasons people like using Twitter is because it is simple by design. However, personally, I think it can be improved to make that tweeting experience all the better. Here are a few random ideas:
TEXT EDITOR
To help you emphasise the points you’re trying to make in your tweets wouldn’t it be great if you could add bold and italics to the text? For example, say someone posed the question: “What did you have for dinner today?” I could reply, “A splendid coq au vin was served and it tasted beautiful!”
Because I eat foods like coq au vin every night, of course.
Okay, the example I’ve given here isn’t great but hopefully you get my point. One thing I’ve noticed through blogging and writing other drivel online for the past few years is Americans love using itallics. They love them. No really they love them. This idea should get a thumbs up from some of them.
HYPERLINKS
Trying to explain one’s self in 140 characters is sometimes quite hard; particularly when you’re discussing complex and descriptive issues such as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Often you might want to include a link to backup your argument and prove your notion which, by the time you’ve converted said link to TinyURL, you’ve used around 25 characters. Bummer!
With this in mind, wouldn’t it be far easier to create links in your already written text? That way you have more characters to play with and you’re also giving fellow tweeters more of an idea of the content of the link they are clicking on. Everyones a winner, baby, that’s the truth.
IMAGES & VIDEO
A picture paints a thousand words and you might say a video paints a million. If Twitter provided an unintrusive method for users to include images or embedded video into tweets then it would A. Save users time by not having to click out to another webpage and B. provide more context to their tweets.
Obviously nobody wants to see huge YouTube videos in people’s tweets; they would take up far too much of the user’s screen real estate and it would just look cluttered. However, if there was a way in which a small link could be provided and, should a user want to view the video, it would expand and play in the Twitter page itself after it was clicked then definitely a benefit in my opinion.
TWEET-TO-TWEET
If you use Facebook (and let’s be honest who doesn’t?) then you’ll know that the Wall-to-Wall facility comes in useful as it allows you to read conversations between two of your friends. One thing that annoys me about Twitter is sometimes you one only see one side of a conversation and, if you’re a nosey inquisitive person like myself, often results in clicking multiple links to discover the full topic of conversation.
What would be great if Twitter provided a means to view discussions by conversing members in a chronicle order cancelling out non-related tweets in the process. In a Tweet-to-Tweet type stylie.
What do you think? One or two useful ideas for the evolution of Twitter or just dumb thoughts that could potentially ruin it?
Stephen is a communications consultant based out of the UK. You can connect with him on Twitter or check out his LinkedIn profile. | Email Stephen
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Chris Applegate
One of the reasons Twitter works so well (as someone who has just posted my 3000th Tweet…) is that less is more, and so I don’t think cramming features into it is a great idea. Going through your points one-by-one:
1. Emphasis you can do with asterisks (proper old school IRC-style). And you don’t really need to italicise ‘coq au vin’ – if Twitter proves anything, it’s that a lot of the rules we’ve used for style are outdated and not very useful.
2. I think pithy link descriptions are better – e.g. “This is awesome: http://tinyurl.com/123456” – as it makes you want to click more. Besides services like del.icio.us are better if you want to microblog lots of links
3. I think Twitter should stick to what it does best rather than branch into video & pictures, though if this is what you’re after you could try Seesmic or Twitxr
4. I really quite like this idea, it doesn’t make posting Tweets any more complicated and it could be quite fun.
In short, I use Twitter just to send short text thoughts and message – it does one job very well, and I use other services to do the other things. I’ve been playing with feed aggregation services like Friendfeed to bundle them all together – maybe that would be a viable route for you instead?
Chris Norton
Hi Stephen, great post – I know what you mean about Twitter it is extremely addictive and I also think it can have more features to make it interesting.
The best thing about Twitter though is that it can be used across various platforms such as Facebook, Friendfeed, Netvibes, Plaxo etc etc. If you fancy using pictures with Twitter, you could try http://www.twitxr.com/.
Melanie Seasons
I’m totally on board with the hyperlinks and text editors, but I think images and video should be left to Pownce. . Like, thumbs up for sure.
One feature I would like added is an e-mail alert every time someone pings me. I have text alerts turned on, but it’s not always reliable – and as an American with a crap mobile plan, I only have so many texts a month before I have to start paying up the you-know-what for them.
Ben Matthews
Agree with Chris on this one – Twitter has a different use compared to other platforms and I’d worry that changing the setup in any major way would spoil it.
Do we really need italics and bold? At the moment, people have to make their messages clear within 140 words in order to create emphasis and emotion.
Also, Twitter has really taken off because of the applications associated with it – e.g. Thwirl, Twitxr, etc.
Really like the url idea tough – would it be easy enough for the folks at Twitter to incorporate?
Dan Thornton
Interesting ideas, but I’d definitely be against images and video.
Formatting? Does this not just add to the time to Tweet (ToT) of every interaction? Suddenly I’ll need to start highlighting text to bold or italicise, rather than firing and forgetting until a response comes in?
Hyperlinks? Possibly. Not sure whether it’s a huge advantage…you can always tweet twice…and char limits force brevity, which is a good thing…
Tweet-to-Tweet could be good. Some way of keeping track of @s and conversation would be handy…
I’m only up to 760 Tweets so far, but it’s growing rapidly….but it’s also complimented by other tools, like Friendfeed, IM etc where appropriate….
Lewis Webb
Could argue that everything you said is basically a description of what Tumblr already does, if the two of them got together to make babies, I’d be very happy. I don’t use all of the Tumbr functionality, but I do think Twitter could do with some extra bells and whistles, then maybe leave it to the user to decide how much of them to use.
Stuart Bruce
At LeWeb3 in Paris Evan Williams (founder of Twitter) spoke about this. The entire principle behind Twitter was to be disruptive by saying less is more. I think his quote was something like “trash features to create value”. The focus is on simplicity.
That said personally I think I probably agree with you. Txt spk and IRC-style *emphasis* doesn’t sit will with me – it just feels ugly. Italics and bold is so much nicer – and just as simple.
The problem with simplicity is that people then start to make it more complicated, which is exactly what has happened to Twitter. People make it complicated by *IRC-style* emphasis – which only really works with people who understand it is emphasis, whereas virtually everyone would recognise your italics and bold emphasis.
I also agree with you and disagree wtih Chris that “This is awesome: http://tinyurl.com/123456†makes you want to click. I’d never click that as I don’t have a clue what it is about, whereas your example I would click because I do know what it’s about.
Melanie Seasons
@Stuart Bruce
Yes, because you never know who’s trying to Rick Roll you…
Right, Davies?
Stephen
@Melanie Haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. Moi? Rick Roll?
Thanks chaps. In all honesty I’m not sure if those suggestions would be good or not. Just thought I’d stir it a little to see what the response would be.
Looks like most of us might like hyperlinks idea, though.
Jon Silk
I agree with most of the comments here. You’d ruin Twitter with too many features. There’s a fine line between Twitter and blogging, and it shouldn’t be crossed. There’s a similar but longer post on the debate here: http://tinyurl.com/2rz8hn
Stephen
Gaaaah! Rick Rolled.
Jason Keeling
It’s been two weeks since I started using Twitter, and the number of contacts and resources I’ve come across has been amazing.
My suggestions: Allow users to remove “Tweets” they’ve read and create an easier means of following conversations.
Amit Klein
Nice post, I think the best way to improve Twitter would be through special interest and contact groups. I discuss them here and would love your feedback: http://amitklein.com/2008/09/26/ways-to-improve-twitter-special-interest-and-contact-groups/
Special interest groups would allow anyone to identify and engage with user’s who are discussing a particular topic. Contact groups would allow full control (privacy and frequency) of how messages are sent and received. In combination, Twitter would much more attractive to business by being able to analyze the abundance of opinions being shared and individuals by customizing their Twitter experience to fit their schedules and habits.