Make Twitter Great Again

Twitter is two products, and one of them sucks. Let’s make Twitter newbie-friendly.

I joined Twitter in 2010. Being unsure what it had to offer, I never logged in since creating my account, until a year later. It was podcasts that brought me back to the microblogging service. Why? Well, almost every podcast host prompts their listeners to follow their show on Twitter, so that is what I did. This reintroduced me to Twitter, and this time I stuck around for good.
To find value in Twitter requires a bit of serendipity.

Twitter is a system, not a destination, and its value is obscure, especially to those new to the platform. Many will create an account, and never use it again simply because they don’t know what to do with it.

This Tweet explains it all.

Let’s face it, influencers (celebs, bloggers, public figures, etc.) are already on Twitter. To them, the use case is obvious. They are the early adopters, the power users. Now, it is time for Twitter to focus on bringing in the followers, the consumers, the later adopters. I don’t tweet much, and my account has no more than fifty followers, some of which are bots or random accounts. Yes, I am at the bottom of the Twitter food chain. I am a Tweet consumer for the most part. Yet, lately I find myself using Facebook more and more for consuming content.

What is the problem?

Twitter is two products designed for two different types of users. And, one of them is kind of “meh.”

Two Products

Nuances aside, it is fair to say that Twitter can be split into the following two products:

• Content Creation: a tool for influencers (celebrities, journalists, etc…) to discuss ideas and broadcast news. A place where news breaks and ideas take flight. Tweets are original content.
• Content Consumption: a channel for regular folks (followers) to discover and consume content. A place where folks follow their favourite artists, bloggers, shows, etc.

Even the company’s mission statement alludes to such a duality.

Our mission: To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.
Create and share, where “share” is part of the content consumption experience.

As a content creation tool, Twitter is great. However, as a content consumption service, it is confusing. Why can’t it be simpler, friendlier, less of a product for power-users. The experience should be as simple as flipping through TV channels.
Think of Twitter as a TV station with great content, but its content is only accessible through the station’s proprietary television set. The catch is that the proprietary televisions are hard to use. Carrying on with this analogy, Facebook makes great television sets.

Facebook Is Eating Twitter’s Lunch

Content created on Twitter eventually makes it way onto other media platforms, such as Facebook, where the content is consumed and ad revenue is made. Below is a graph to illustrate my point.

I know this is happening because I used to embed Tweets, and shared them on Facebook to generate some traffic to my site. It works, and it is done by others all the time. Just think about the thousands of articles based on Donald Trump’s Twitter account that have been written by the media.

If Twitter is such a great service, why is it having so much trouble growing its user base?
Well, because most of people are content consumers, and Twitter was created for content creators, the power-user, the early adopters. Maybe it is time for the company to start paying more attention to regular folks, the content consumers.

Make Twitter Newbie Friendly

For a start, Twitter should make their value proposition clear to those who have never used the service. To illustrate this point, here is a screenshot of Twitter’s desktop landing page.

Connect with your friends?

_note: Twitter has revamped its desktop landing page since late 2016.

When was Twitter about friends? I got Facebook for that. In fact, Twitter can be a lonely place if you don’t have followers or get any retweets. By now everyone knows that Twitter is not a social network, except maybe for those responsible for Twitter’s desktop site.

Make search and discovery of Tweets be front and center.

Twitter is about speed, timeliness. Let a user get to the content as quickly as possible. To be greeted by a login prompt is off putting. Those who want to sign up will eventually sign up. For example, when I listen to a podcast and want to quickly follow a show host or track an event, Twitter’s interface is just not very useful. These are missed opportunities, as show hosts almost always say “follow us on Twitter at blah blah blah.” Too bad Twitter is not getting the full benefit from such free promotion.

Tweet Jockey

Not everyone is an influencer whose tweets are retweeted many times over. A big part of the Twitter experience is content curation. Why not make Tweet curation easier and more rewarding.

Everyone can be a Tweet jockey.

A channel feature would be useful. This is what Pinterest does for images. A channel could be about a topic or feature a group of influential people within a domain. It is like lists, but better. Channel should be easy to create, share, rank, and follow. This will make curation and discovery easier and more enjoyable, even for the newbies.
Tweets are ephemeral, and channels are not.

Channels will be a great entry point for those new to Twitter.
Twitter’s wide breadth of content is too overwhelming. People need some help finding out what to follow. And, channels can help solve this problem. Just Google “who to follow on Twitter,” and the results are telling.

With so many articles on “who to follow on Twitter,” the company should really take notice. Sure, one could argue that the service is getting lots of free coverage, a good thing. However, it also indicates that Twitter is under-serving its users, namely newbies, when it comes to discovery.

Well, these are my two cents about Twitter.

It is two products rolled into one, and one is in need of a bit more love.