Tweaking Twitter – How Would You Improve Twitter?

TwitterI just did my usual catchup on Twitter and had some ideas for how it could be improved. It’s a funny thing, on alternate days I love it and loathe it.

For those who do not use it, Twitter is a social tool based around very short and sharp messages (or Tweets). You have 140 characters to express yourself. Everyone you are following posts their own tweets too which appear in a reverse-chronological list.

While it can be very informative, and some times it is the fastest way to get breaking news, on other days it is just a severe time sink. Some of these ideas could help make it a more useful and productive service …

  1. Show reply buttons - Right now I have to copy and paste a persons Twitter name for it to show as a reply. Why isn’t there a reply link right under every tweet?
  2. Unread tweets – I don’t have Twitter open all day so I need a way to catch up quickly. One option would be to have a “view all unread” option, but I am open to other solutions.
  3. Unwittingly ignoring - People reply but I will never see those replies unless I am following. There ought to be an option to see replies from people not following?
  4. Follow all – Related to the above, how about an option where you can click one button and follow all the people that are following you? I find it far easier to remove the one or two annoying spammers than tick tick tick all the people I want to follow (over a hundred I need to go through right now).
  5. Archives further than 10 pages - I got back to my machine this morning to find I had to go back 10 pages to catch up. Good job as that is as far back as you can go. So if you want to recall a past conversation? Out of luck. Surely they can archive somehow?
  6. Threaded tweets? – Sometimes it is difficult to see who is replying to what, a threaded view would be useful.
  7. Sort contacts alphabetically - If you want to find particular contact you have to mouse over each tiny thumbnail. That is fine if you have 20 or so but now I am reaching 100 it is annoying that they are in seemingly random order.
  8. Group contacts – It would be nice to be able to just quickly catch up with work-related tweeters, then do a “all” to catch up on everyone else
  9. Filter tweets – In a similar way it would be great if when you tweet you could tag the tweet and be able to filter by tag or keyword. I am thinking not everyone needs to know that I am starting a new spreadsheet or changing the critical path, but my project team colleagues would. Being able to categorize would make it useful in a work context as well as social?
  10. One size fits all doesn’t fit – I would like to be able to change view settings, for example how many tweets to show per page, size of thumbnail, etc. Maybe sort by tweeter?

These are just my suggestions, how would you improve Twitter? Have you not tried it? Have you tried it and hated it? Why?

Please share in the comments …

Posted on November 1, 2007 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Web 2.0

Comments

5 Responses to “Tweaking Twitter – How Would You Improve Twitter?”

  1. Chris Garrett on November 1st, 2007 2:08 pm

    I’d like to see some geographical features, perhaps automatic recognition of addresses in tweets or even a Twitter client specifically for GPS enabled phones that would tweet my location periodically.

    If I could tweet my location and find out who (out of the people following me, to avoid privacy issues) is nearby that would be pretty awesome.

  2. Chris Garrett on November 1st, 2007 9:16 pm

    Good idea, never thought of adding location based info.

    BTW, I can never get used to seeing “my” name attached to a message I didn’t write ;)

  3. Twitter for Traffic: Who is Using Twitter and How? @ chrisg.com on November 7th, 2007 2:14 pm

    [...] Twitter has mutated over time. My opinion of the service has ranged from true believer, skeptic, objective critic, right up to now which I would describe as “cautious optimist“. It took a while for me [...]

  4. Joe on August 17th, 2008 4:00 pm

    Groups would be a must. And it’s impossible to find someone in your follower list if you have a lot of followers. The site is just a disjointed mess really…

  5. amit klein on September 27th, 2008 3:10 am

    Nice post, I’ve expanded on your idea of groups (point 8) by discussing Special Interest and Contact Groups here: 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.

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