This was originally on my Tumblr blog…but I thought I’d move it here to make it more visible (and commentable).
I thought that I’d expand upon my earlier tweet (right) with a related “what I think Twitter needs”.
Twitter is a river with a waterfall. The base of the waterfall represents the present, the downstream river represents the past. All of your followers are standing at the base of the waterfall, watching your tweets (and everyone else’s tweets) float by. They can walk downstream to see some of the older tweets, but most don’t. They only see what is right in front of them. Sure, someone might pick up your tweet from downstream and throw it back to the waterfall (retweet), but most of the time, if a follower isn’t there…they miss what you said.
What percent of your followers do you think sees every tweet you make? 5%? 10%?
That, in my opinion, is the biggest defect Twitter has.
What if #1: What if you could anchor a tweet in the river (so the threaded conversation I mentioned above could take place)?
What if #2: What if you could tag some of your own tweets as something the REALLY want your followers to read AND it was really easy for users to see them. Sure, you could mark it as a “favorites,” but most people use that function to tag their personal favorites (of other people). Mine: http://twitter.com/favorites. Additionally, most Twitter users don’t even know that favorites exist (or that they have RSS feeds). Addressing this “what if” would instantaneously convert Twitter into an actual “microblogging platform” instead of a stream of consciousness.
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Later I had a Skype conversation with Matt Buchanan (@ptp):
Stephen M. Nipper: It is the #2 idea that I think is the gem. Seriously…it would be SO easy for Twitter to do it, basically redefine “favorites” into “my tweet you should read” and “other people’s tweets I really liked”
J. Matthew Buchanan: i was think about the stream metaphor. How about a virtual desktop where you identify the topics you’re interested in — ALWAYS, and those that strike your fancy for a PARTICULAR DAY. Then, as the stream flows in, it visually pulls some out that meet those topics, and send them over to a stack. You can flip through the stacks during the day, publish them to a blog, read a report on them at the end of the day (e.g., via email summary), etc.
J. Matthew Buchanan: Ah….to be young and a web dev. I’d love to tackle something like that. Twitter is failing to realize its potential.
J. Matthew Buchanan: as usual, you’re a genius. just wish we had time to play with something like that.
Stephen M. Nipper: Nice idea….like drawing irrigation water off the river.
Stephen M. Nipper: I tell you, it is that “must maintain SMS friendliness” that is what kills Twitter’s potential.
J. Matthew Buchanan: but also what makes it beautiful. therein lies the rub
J. Matthew Buchanan: if they could take the links out – put those in a separate field so they don’t count against the 140 or so.
J. Matthew Buchanan: maybe ditch sms….but keep a reasonable limit. 250?
Stephen M. Nipper: nah, keep the 140 char, but let the client/software/site tack on additional information (e.g., actually link @replies to the tweet they were replying to)
Stephen M. Nipper: that way software could put 2 and 2 together….oh, this tweet is in response to that tweet…I’ll thread them.
Stephen M. Nipper: oh, this tweet is tagged as “important”
Stephen M. Nipper: allow hastags to move out of the 140
J. Matthew Buchanan: combined with the reader’s identified “topics of interest” would allow for creation of relevant “stacks” that could be assembled into meaningful output, like blog posts, reports, etc.
J. Matthew Buchanan: q would be – develop as a new system, or build on top of twitter. hoooooge question.
Stephen M. Nipper: mark my words, twitter will end up being the pipe (backend), someone else will create the killer system that uses that pipe
J. Matthew Buchanan: i think so too
Stephen M. Nipper: all because twitter is stuck in SMS friendly mode
Make sure you read the comments below (the discussion continues)…
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Suggested reading: Tac Anderson on Why you should use Favorites in Twitter.
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Great idea. I find myself waiting around to tweet something I want my friends to see until I think there are enough of them on Twitter… Big time waster!
@suedahlgren
Steve – some good ideas. Not sure why Twitter couldn’t autogenerate a unique thread number to allow threaded tweets where replies would share the same thread number. I agree that such threads could be useful. Perhaps retweets could also be grouped as sub-threads.
Also agree that # marks should be not be included as part of the length limitation. Perhaps a secondary, optional window could be used for inputting # marks, keywords or the like. [e.g. primary input "What are you doing" and secondary "Who might want to know?"]
The need for tagging a tweet as REALLY important eludes me, however – it would seem to be achievable to modify favorites, as you suggest. I don’t tweet so often to require that functionality. Personally, as a reader, I would probably tend to be turned off by that. (Surely I have a personality disorder that compels me to resist conforming.)
My 2 cents.
Best,
@ipguy
@ipguy:
Another thought would be that the client could send 2 tweets for every tweet…one that is the actual SMS friendly tweet and a second that includes the metadata/tagging/relationship information, etc.
Re: tagging a tweet as “REALLY important,” don’t think along the lines of someone marking an email as “high priority.” Think of it merely as a tag/metadata. For instance, perhaps you don’t want to read my “personal” tweets about what I had for lunch, but you DO want to read anything that I consider to be an “important” tweet.
One thing I SHOULD do is pay better attention to which of my followers are using the “favorites” function appropriately/effectively and subscribe to the RSS feed of their favorites. That way I’d catch those “important” tweets I might otherwise miss.
Compare this to Google Reader’s “Share” function which allows people to “share” blog posts they found interesting with their friends (I find som many COOL things that way…in blogs I don’t read but friends of mine do).