Time for a hypothetical question/discussion:
How would you improve Twitter?
Lets just say Twitter have pulled the readership of TwiTip into their offices for a focus group (actually…. lets make it that they fly us all to Hawaii for a week of short daily focus groups….). They want to talk to real Twitter users of all experience levels who are using Twitter in a variety of ways to find out how they’d like to see Twitter develop over the coming year.
What would you say? What features would you like to see added (or removed) from Twitter? How could the service be improved, enhanced and made more useful to you?
Looking forward to hear your thoughts – it is over to you!
Interesting question. As a recent convert, that is a little harder to answer. That being said, one thing I have seen add-ons (like TweetDock) try to handle is groups. Built in support for some sort of grouping would make Twitter easier to scale once you get beyond the small follower/following set.
I’d improve the profile page, adding maybe a keyword function, and then turn the *expletive deleted* people search function back on. It annoys me no end that I can’t search for folks to follow based on what’s in their profiles.
I’d like to see two related features where, when someone follows me, I can see Followers and the people who they follow in common without having to scroll through all the people on my own.
I would like to see a way of grouping followers, or assigning tags to people, so that one can quickly scan through a shorter list for topics of interest.
I would also make it a requirement for people to use their real names, or at least “a name” in place of a link or the type of service they offer (which is a blatant way of saying, here, befriend me cuz I have something to sell you down the pike).
I know it’s known for it’s 140 character limit, but I wish they could add just a couple of more characters so I can finish my thought. The problem with this though is that a higher character limit will always bee too little. Then we might as well have full blown blogs.
On the other hand though, I wich the direct message didn’t have a limit of 140 characters. It’s a personal message so it shouldn’t have a limit.
I would have a ‘followers in common’ feature. Then you can compare yourself to people with a higher ranking in your community. It would be both interesting and useful to see who follows both of you and who you both follow.
I use itweet.net/web specifically because replies don’t open in a new window or tab. So, threaded tweets, or way to open what’s being replied to within the same box as the tweet I’m looking at.
It would be nice to set up a rule to disallow anyone from following me if they have less than 3 tweets and are already following more than 1,800 people. I end up blocking those followers anyway and they are usually trying to sell something.
Right now, Twitter seems to randomly select the 36 avatars that appear on my Twitter page under “following.” I want to be able to choose who gets into that magic number, since some people I follow are more important to me than others.
I would improve the servers.
There have been too many sightings of the Fail Whale, especially yesterday when I couldn’t Tweek for an hour or so!
bring IM back and somehow manage threaded discussions. right now it’s too confusing to follow a conversation. sometimes someone will @ me replying to something i tweeted a few tweets ago. without context sometimes i’m not sure what they are replying to!
Make it easier to monitor multiple accounts without add-ons.
I like the idea of having a ‘common’ followers section, great thought!
I also think there should be an ability to have ‘groups’ or communities if you will.
I would like to be able to tweet from my phone, but Twitter doesn’t accept Metro PCS users in the US. That and I think the People Search function (when on) could be a little better. Maybe add some variety to it – like searching people by their interests.
I also love the ’shared follows’ idea! Kudos!
I’d let people DM each other, even if they are not following each other.
Threaded comments. I should be able to ‘@’ users, identifying which specific tweet I am referring to. That also means being able to check all responses to a specific tweet.
Improvements: More servers, or whatever would be needed to keep the tweets coming through seamlessly. Several times we’ve had “hashtag” gatherings, and at times the tweets slow down to being 3 minutes behind. Makes it hard to effectively communicate. I’d also add a feature that allows users to search for others, not by name or username, but by interests — and it shouldn’t have to be dependent upon whether someone tweeted about that interest. Sort of a searchable profile where we can search by interests, occupations, location, etc.
I want to group people. At least give us a few default groups to start with. Friends, family, business.
It would be very cool to add italics or bold type to your tweets, especially if it could be done without going against your character limit. Adding “i” or “b” tags around a word could work, but it would then kill seven characters.
I’d like Plurk-like integration, where you can start a “Conversation topic” where anybody interested in that topic can come to add to the conversation. Maybe call it groups and instead of @username, post to #group. Just rough thoughts but I like the idea.
10 more characters to make a nice 150…that’s all I need!
This is a no brainer. How about getting rid of all of the annoying messages that say this:
This happens when searching for people and when deleting posts, but probably for other stuff as well. Just making the thing work would be a good start!
Like AIM, a Twitter handle should indicate whether the person is “away” or around…maybe BOLD if they’re signed in and active, and gray if they’ve been idle a few min.
I too would vote for a tool to tag followers into categories so that you could group them and view just a particular group at a time. Once you follow over several hundred people you get to the point where there is too much to keep up with on a particular screen. Would love it if you could tag someone based on a topic or interest then view that topic or group page.
Would be interesting to see how others “group” you as well. Search for twittags per se.
Monitter.com helps with that provided people use certain keywords but it’s far from usable as a group tool.
There are so many enhancements I would love to see–groups, time-filtering for tweet density, a suggestion function for people I should follow, but one that sticks out has to do with the Twitterberry app. I would like an auto-completer function added so when I am “@” someone that I have replied to before I have a drop down option I can highlight rather than try to remember how to spell it out. Anyway they could facilitate the interaction function mobile apps would be great.
I would add the following:
1) ability to remove direct responses
2) better pagenation and search features to filter out friends (instead of having to click next 5 million times)
3) more custom design features
4) recordable voice tweets (playable via rollover)
I would love for Twitter to turn on the ‘firehose’ so that we can see tweets in real time, rather than in batches. Also, I would love for a built-in tracking system so that you could subscribe to keywords within Twitter, rather than through a third-party. Lastly, it would be nice if they fixed the Twitter history so that you could see more than a max of 3,200 posts on someone’s Twitter history.
http://twitter.com/coryobrien
Really simple: put twitter-search on everyone’s home page. Why should we have to leave twitter in order to do a search??
Here’s a few of the top of my head:
1. Threaded replies
2. Rooms and/or topics: Allow creating rooms or topics that users can follow/belong to. Users can directly tweet to these rooms.
3. Groups: Allow grouping of your friends list. Make it easier to track tweets by groups (using RSS or web)
4. Mute: Temporarily mute a friend (for those especially noisy ones)
5. Links: Since a fair percentage of tweets are for link sharing, make a new tab that shows tweets with links vs. ones that don’t. It helps address the signal vs. noise problem
I just started using Twitter today, actually, and I’m already getting over my head. When you’re following a lot of people, it’s hard to keep up with individuals. If you could group the people you’re following and check by groups, it would help control the chatter.
For instance, I’d like to sort the people who Twitter like crazy into one group so I can still hear from those who only post a message or two each day.
I’m new to Twitter, and not many of my friends use it, but it’s fascinating, so I would love to be able to search people by interests so I can find and follow people I don’t know who might have something interesting or useful or entertaining to say.
I can’t “search” in Twitter. Tells me it’s disabled or something. I’d like to be able to search for Tweets or Twitterers who are like me – or of interest to me. Now, frankly, it’s a crapshoot. I also think that would not only help me follow people but find followers who would be interested in my Tweets, my blog, my writing etc.
Auto-complete for @ messages. Perfect for those days when you want a public shout-out—not a reply—and you just can’t remember someone’s twitter handle.
I would like to see some type of grouping capabilities added.
I mainly use twitter to follow various sources to get information about disasters, emergencies and other like data, and I would like to be able to place some of these sources into tabbed areas, or groups which would make it easier to follow specific data from specific sources.
For instance you could have the main page where all the tweets show up but then you can have a group or tab that you can customize.
Thanks for asking the question Darren.
I would make the site work consistently. Features like the search and “find and follow” are very inconsistent. While they have reduced the “fail whale” they need to make sure the features all stay up.
I think they should start shortening the character limit each month by 1 – November: 140, December: 139, January: 138…
Why? Just to see what the lower threshold is. Maybe we only need 83 characters…
The one thing I would like is a presence setting. This would enable me to set my status as away, busy etc and this would then pause my twitterstream until I return.
1. Threaded conversations
2. Ability to easily handle multiple accounts
3. Filters, so that I can follow tweets on a particular topic or a particular group of people you’re following (and not see the ones I don’t care about)
Please put the Search tab back on the top nav bar. I miss the one-click Search function.
First of all, Hawaii is beautiful. Who’s going to get drinks with me after this focus group?
So, I think what I would like to see changed is an easier way to connect replies. If someone replies to a message, I can usually gather which message. Not always. I made that mistake earlier today actually. If I’m being nosy and want to look at what messages other people are responding to, it’s hard to do in the current set-up. Maybe that’s a good thing.
The other thing, and I don’t think it’s twitter’s fault, but links within the tweet. They make them tinyurl’s which is awesome, but then I can’t see where it’s going to take me. I wish I point my mouse at the tinyurl and get the actual url or something.
I wish there was a way to sort through followers/following.
I wish we could choose whose avatars showed up on the “following” part of our own screen.
Finally, I wish that if someone wanted to post a picture, they could post a really tiny picture right in the tweet. The size of the avatar, but on the other side of the tweet. And if you click on it, you see the full size.
I need a pina coloada. Aloha.
My Tweets won’t talk to me. I have 66 of them. I tweet my new posts from my blog everyday. I try to instigate conversation. But nada. Are they crazy? Or is it me?
The answer is in one word:
TRACK
Bring it back and it will be the answer for solutions to apps and business plans.
I’m seconding most of what’s been said. I’d like:
1) Ability to group followers so I can prioritize my time reading tweets
2) Fix the search!!!
3) I would like an easier way to get information about / navigate my follows/followers than scrolling through page after page
Gosh, do you think they’ll listen to us?
~Angela
They need to re-allow SMS updates to the United Kingdom and other countries.
If I’m not signed into Twitter (or TweetDeck, etc.) I see the DM tweet via email to me. Then to reply I have to sign into Twitter (or other app) to respond.
Allow me to reply to the DM tweet email directly as a ‘reply’.
A better functional search would be the first place I’d start, emphasis on functional. Next, I’d improve status updates so that users would know that its status is down (not even a fail whale yesterday).
Like so many other Tweeps I talk to, I’d like to see a search feature on my home page to allow me to find new folks talking about shared interests, in a specific region and/or industry. Still there’s http://search.twitter.com, but…
I agree with Seshu and Kerwood and the idea about allowing the creation of groups. Think of all the productive conversations that could take place and just-in-time.
Hey, couldn’t Twitter make money off helping people group themselves with other like-minded people and give advertisers nice tight demo-graphics? People don’t seem to mind a (quiet) ad here and there if it’s relevant.
Thanks for the question, Darren!
-Bridget Zeuner
I read most of the comments listed here and tried to put them into this widget. People can click and rate the words and phrases or add their own (limit 15 characters). Check this out and see what you think. http://qcwidget.com/widgets/93bd98d8ca88
For including links in my posts, I wish I could highlight text in my message and right click and “Add a Link” (like I can do in my email application). That way the web address won’t count as part of my 140 character count.
Or maybe there is a way to do this already?! I’m a Twitter Newbie. Please let me know if there is. Send me a twit message.
http://twitter.com/anderson_scott
As a professional organizer, I can’t help noticing how disorganized some things are. I’d love it if we could:
1) Search our both our list of followers and those we follow by using a drop-down box such as we have on the Direct Messages page. Sadly, since you can only DM a mutual follower (a fair policy), the drop-down can’t be used universally. Having on on our follow/followers pages would be grand. Failing that, being able to see ALL followed/followers alphabetically at a click would be super, too.
2)Search for specific @replies to or from us more easily. Using the main Twitter search could require going back through several screens. Having a search specific to our own accounts would be a vast improvement.
3)Sort into groups (like the 3rd party tools allow) and read just some categories of people’s tweets.
4)Thread tweets. Oy, would that be great. It would help to know to what someone is replying, especially when someone is replying to tweets several days/weeks old.
5)Use the People search again. Sigh.
Ditto about the fix the BLEEP BLEEP Search function….
Just today I was wanting to know how the heck to keep my twitter stuff organized… The way I figured it out on my own was to watch where and how people were twittering and then I followed that to the tools they were using. I found OutTwit which is WAY too cool! and then tweetlater to automate the say welcome to the followers email… What I think would be really helpful is to have a spot for “TWITTER APPROVED” applications that twitter knows are legit and interface well with twitter. Or maybe YOU Darren could have a TWITIP Approved list of twitterific stuff!
I’d like if the @name didn’t count in your 140 characters. Recently, I was involved in a Twitter debate, and by the time we included all of the @s to address all of the players, there was hardly any room for a message!
Supports for multiple accounts and possible the ability to create groups. I’d also like to see the character count increased by like 5. I always have like that one word that just won’t fit but is crucial to the sentence.
I’ve had several ideas for improvements, but the single most critical one in my mind is an ability to “mark user as read“
A “Help Wanted” section
A “Think-Tank” for solution-focused problem solving of various issues submitted by Tweeters
There is such potential for the Tweet community to just be there for others.
Recently, a friend needed a family court affidavit proofread, as she is representing herself. Tweeters have been helpful in tapping their networks so that we can find her people who know how to speak the lingo of the law, so that her document can be factual and not opinionated.
We are still welcoming lawyers, grad students etc, who are willing to proofread and give feedback. At the very least she does not feel powerless, unprepared and a victim of a bullying ex with the dollars to have his affidavit prepared by a lawyer.
I would allow the ‘delete post’ option! (or make it work again and not be ‘temporarily disabled’) As of today I’ve seen several people attending pubcon accidentally publish their cell phone numbers to the world, and I’ve been trying to get rid of one of my previous ‘rants’ for about a week now
FYI to those above: You can group friends using Tweet Deck. It’s a pretty cool feature.
I’d like to see a direct link to twitter search (summize) on the sidebar plus the ability to click on a person’s handle and see threaded discussions like what’s available on twitter search. A little more flexibility on the profile would be a good idea too.
I would like Twitter to be able to go back more than 40 pages.
I don’t know much about back-end, behind-the-scenes technology, but I want whatever it takes for Twitter to run smoothly without tweets, DMs, etc. disappearing.
And yes, I would pay a (small) fee for Twitter to run smoothly.
I’d also echo @RebecaTrautner: “I’d let people DM each other, even if they are not following each other” because some of the big gurus, I follow, they don’t follow me, and sometimes the tweet should be a DM.
Oh, I just thought of another one: how about automatically shortening your URLs and counting the shortened URL into your word count instead of the long URL.
Sure, you could use TinyURL.com, but I want Twitter to do it for me!
I would love to be able to archive, bookmark, and tag my Favorites so that I can search through this growing Library of Tweeted Links and resources that I’m building there. Currently I copy and paste bunches of them into Word (so they’re searchable), and after I copy them I un-favorite them so that I don’t accumulate too many that I’ll never be able to sort through or find again.
I don’t know if this has been said before (I tried reading through all the comments but then I started to go all cross-eyed), but I’d love to see Twitter add a function that notes when you’ve responded to an @ reply, so you can remember who you’ve responded to.
Sort the people you follow!
1. alphabetically
2. whether they follow you back
3. whether you have “device notifications” turned on for them
OAuth (to prevent anymore scares like the TwitterRank situation)
That is all
1. Fix the search function.
2. Allow users to “toggle off” or “mute?” a particular feed. I want to follow the person, just remove his/her posts for the moment. A good example of when I would use this is the traffic feed I follow. I really only want to follow this about 10 minutes before I hit the road. Otherwise, it’s noise.
3. Have a bookmark feature that allows users to bookmark where they last left off and have a button that automatically takes you to that page.
4. Allow users to determine which IDs to appear under the “Following” section so we can put those that are most important to us.
5. Allow direct messages to show up in the queue.
6. Bring back the trash can / delete option so that users can delete their own posts.
7. Employ some sort of algorithm that provides users recommendations for followers. I’d like the algorithm to include some sort of analysis of followers and following (degrees of separation, etc) and include analysis of words used in blogs.
First off, I really liked this idea Darren. I have been looking for some place to air my Twitter rants. But don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate Twitter. It’s just that Twitter has a lot of places that needs improvement.
1. A completely customizable profile page
I know that Twitter is all about limits. But the limits on design is putting me off. I’m also a pixel designer so I would want to recreate my profile in CSS – if only Twitter could permit it.
2. A comment section
I know this would be likened to the wall on Facebook. But I would like to know more about people through the feedback of other people. A small description of the self would not be enough. Especially if you’re trying to know the person before following.
3. Link to other social media sites
There are a lot of websites supporting or incorporating Twitter but Twitter is not returning the favor. I want to extend my connections on Twitter and maybe add them on Digg, Stumbleupon, Facebook, etc. That way, I can view their activity and maybe support the people I follow.
4. A following icon
This is just an idea. When you visit someone’s profile, you usually see if you need to follow or you’re already following that person. However, you don’t know if that person is following you back. You have to go outside to other websites to find out about this. A following icon/label would solve this problem
5. Getting replies even if the name is not at the beginning
I noticed this recently. When you put the @name in the middle of a sentence and not at the beginning, the person does not receive the tweet at the reply page. If I’m not watching the public timeline closely, I may have missed some replies because of this feature.
6. Allowing BBcode or HTML on profile/tweets
I hope certain codes which can alter the type (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough), alignment and links. This is without interference with the character limit.
Jaxa – I believe the trashcan is working again.
Lewis – I support the “followers in common” idea
I am enjoying using twitter. It is a good way to keep in touch with others online. I also enjoy reading what other people post.
1. @username auto complete like in gmail
2. bring back nudge/poke in facebook
3. ability to reply to tweet in mobile version
4. they have to acquire twitpic
5. they have to acquire twitterfeed
6. bring back twitter im
7. sms gateway for other country with minimum charge/free
i’d love twitter to update more things for you!
I would like a twitter that able to have a tagging, twit photo and tagging map. Which currently I using third parties system to do all this things.
If they would bring back the disabled features (IM being at the very top of my list), plus let you group people, plus the “mute” feature — that would be just about perfect. At least until the next round of updates
I’d like to get
- the option to sort my follower/following lists by name and category too instead of having them listed chronologically only
- the option to categorize the people I follow
- the option to have favourite feeds (persons) in addition to favourite posts
- a dm option included in new follow-actions (dm is not possible if the person doesn’t follow you back yet)
- icons for sent/read/replied to for dm
- the option to link more than one website in my profile (website and blog, different websites)
As a Mac Virtual Assistant who is on Mail.app almost all day, I would love Twitter integrated into that somehow.
I would love it if we had the option of viewing somebody’s profile without seeing all of their @replies.
I would add the option to receive only @replies from a particular user via your mobile device. The volume of tweets by some makes it hard to follow, and this, I think, would make it a bit easier to interact with some people.
Having groups or topics and be able to check in what group a certain user is and to be able to search in specific groups.
I love twitter 140 character limitations and all!
Grouping followers/friends would be awesome. I would like to group my followers and be able to send messages just to a certain set of followers. For instance, during the election I would have liked to send certain detail-specific political messages to my “political junkie” followers but the rest of the followers probably could care less about these messages. I suppose I could setup additional accounts and just have those users follow that account but I would like to be able to do everything with one id rather than managing several accounts.
Until I installed toro this past week, I would have said I want twitter to get rid of the API call limit (is that the correct terminology?). I really love that toro does not limit API calls so I receive all my tweets using this.
I suggest Twitter make it easier to create page backgrounds that look decent on a variety of monitor sizes. Most people’s backgrounds (including ours) look absolutely terrible and tacky!
Laura Christianson
co-founder, HeBlogsSheBlogs.com
https://twitter.com/HeBlogsSheBlogs
There has been some talk in the blogosphere about real-time Twitter micro novels, this approach would be interesting in particular genres such as Twitter crime micro-novel … A vampire did it
http://twitter.com/NYCrimeStories
NYCrimeStories approach is informative (procedurally educational ) and the story interesting….
Luciano Passuello said: Threaded comments. I should be able to ‘@’ users, identifying which specific tweet I am referring to.
This is available now, but broken.
Sadly, that leads into my pet peeve about Twitter. It seems that existing features are disabled and not brought back and new features are put in place without adequate testing. How can you installa feature that explicitly adds “in_reply_to_status_id=1234567…” and have that feature Not Work?
I’d love to be able to bookmark tweets from within the mobile app versions of Twitter so that I could read them on my PC when I get back home or to work. It’d be great for links to long blog posts that I don’t want to read on my phone, or for useful stats that people are tweeting that I want to save.
@moneymatters
I’d love to see twitter make it easier (somehow) to follow conversations on the site. As it is now it can get quite confusing trying to figure out who’s replying to who, and what is being said.
@infonote
Ability for users to create groups.
I would like to see Twitter have faster servers and more servers. The service needs to be speedy and reliable, and rid itself of all known bugs. I would like Twitter to make sure the service works the way it is supposed to without all the glitches. It’s a popular service; make sure you have the server capacity to handle your user base.
I would like a more useable search engine. Why can’t I search for people who are interested in cats? or butterflies? Why can’t I search for people who like a certain band, like the Bare Naked Ladies? Why can’t I search for all people in city of ___ ? It is hard to connect with others on Twitter when the search is so limited.
I would love to see Twitter incorporate transparent backgrounds as a design setting option, so that we can see through our text if we want to and see our background image.
I do not want it to show when I am online or offline like AIM. I like my privacy. One thing I really dislike about StumbleUpon is you cannot even look at someone else’s page without them knowing you arrived on their page as a “visitor.” Please do not add that type of functionality to Twitter. I do not want to know every time someone looks at my page, nor do I want them knowing how much time I spend checking them out and reading their tweets, nor how much time I spend on Twitter. That is my business.
I’d like DM left as it is, as far as if I do not follow you, you cannot DM me. This has to remain because there are too many spammers.
It would be nice to be able to choose to view all @replies for some of those we follow and for others we follow to ignore all @replies.
Since Twitter has trouble with the few features it currently offers (without producing Fail Whales and the service going down) that perhaps we should not ask for new features and merely ask that Twitter be able to maintain the service at an acceptable level. That seems challenging enough for the managers of Twitter.
@HavokHeads
1.) Search on the home page
2.) Threaded Replies
These 2 things alone would make Twitter exponentially better!
(Better/more servers certainly wouldn’t hurt either!)