Twitter: The Obvious Missing Features

Image via CrunchBase

Twitter is for real. I have felt that since February 2009 when @jobsworth covinced me to get on the train. Otherwise in 2008 and before I looked down upon the service. I was a full form blogger. 140 characters could not contain me.

Twitter does not have the buzz today that it had for the first half of last year. Following the same pattern, some of FourSquare's buzz is now dying out just when it is getting better and better as a business.

Twitter had major scaling issues last year. That was a high class problem to have. But it still should have walked and chewed gum at the same time. It should have scaled well and it should have added features as well.

My belief is that the best features have to be at Twitter.com itself. I have the Twitter ecosystem in high regards, but Twitter should buy or build the best of the breed.

What are some obvious features that Twitter lacks?

(1) A Four Column View

Just like I am for four or more native inboxes for my Gmail, I am for four columns for Twitter. You log in and the four columns are the default view. Save me clicks. (Reimagining The Inbox The Simple Way)

• The Stream
• The Inbox (@paramendra)
• Direct Messages

Okay, so that's three, not four. 

(2) Several Lists At Once

I want to be able to view my four favorite lists at once. I might create and follow tens of lists, but this would force me to think which my four top lists are. Give me one click on the right hand side that leads me to four columns that house my four lists. 

(3) Threaded Conversations

When someone replies to one of my tweets, I should not have to right click and open up a new tab with that tweet of mine to figure out what exactly that person replied to. Again, save me clicks. 

(4) Deleting 20 Direct Messages At Once

Just like I don't have to delete one email at a time, I don't want to have to delete one DM at a time. I want to be able to delete 20 DMs at a time. Select all, and delete. I also want to be able to unfollow 20 people at a time in my DM box. You sending me a  DM I did not want is often a good reason for me to start unfollowing you. But if I have to unfollow one person at a time, you have the upper hand. 

(5) The @ Reply Ninjas

My inbox is often flooded with people who will put my Twitter handle in a tweet and there will be no message in there, or some unwanted marketing message. Often times they will put my Twitter handle and that of 10 others. They got 10 people's attention, they think. 

People who I don't follow, when they send me a tweet, instead of giving me the two regular options of reply and retweet, give me three options: reply, retweet, block person. A blocked person should not be able to show up in my inbox even if they put my Twitter handle into their tweet.

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Twitter Has To Scale The Signals

Image via CrunchBase

Twitter Does The Deed: Ads
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Twitter Need Get Work Done
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If I have five friends, and all of them are on Facebook and all of them have my number, and we party every other week, we are talking. But what if I have 500 friends? What if I have five friends and 5,000 fans? What if I have two friends and 20,000 online contacts? What if I am being followed by 50,000 people? What if I end up with five million followers?

Twitter has to make sure that at no point do the signals turn into noise for me. At no point should I get overwhelmed. I might have 500,000 followers, and if all of them tweet me, I should still be able to hear what they are saying. (Twitter Visualization: Reading Many Tweets At Once)

The power users will tell you, if you really want to make the best of Twitter, you got to wade into the ecosystem and find all the right apps for you. I am cool with that suggestion, but Twitter should not be. If Twitter envisions a billion users, as it should (Goal: A Billion People On Twitter April 2009) - heck, I think Twitter could beat Facebook to that magic number, but not the Twitter of today - then Twitter has to make sure all the action is at Twitter.com. Twitter bought Summize, Twitter bought Tweetie, it could easily buy 20 more such companies today. Buy or build, buy or build, buy or build.

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Twitter Does The Deed: Ads

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Netizen, June 2009: Monetizing Twitter: A Few Ideas
New York Times, April 12, 2010: Twitter Unveils Plans to Draw Money From Ads

....finally answering the question of how the company expects to turn its exponential growth into revenue.....Promoted Tweets....in the stream of Twitter posts, based on how relevant they might be to a particular user.....Twitter.com had 22.3 million unique visitors in March, up from 524,000 a year ago.... the first significant step toward a business model..... and when someone rolls over a promoted post with a cursor, it turns yellow. .... chatter on Twitter can forecast box-office revenue for movies ....“Media like Twitter and Facebook are so enormous that it’s very hard to imagine it would be easy to manipulate the conversation.” ...... Twitter will measure what it calls resonance, which takes into account nine factors, including the number of people who saw the post, the number of people who replied to it or passed it on to their followers, and the number of people who clicked on links......Once Twitter figures out how to measure the number of people who read posts other than on Twitter.com, it will also allow third-party developers to show ads and share revenue.

"....and when someone rolls over a promoted post with a cursor, it turns yellow...."

That color coding was an idea I had promoted at my blog. The tweet ads have to look different from the regular tweets, obviously different. And color coding is the best way to achieve that.

Google did not do banner ads like Yahoo. Similary Facebook could not do Google ads. And Twitter ads have to be specific to the Twitter platform. Tweets are it.

Resonance. I like the term.

Twitter has taken its first big step in the monetization department. This might be the only step necessary. They could spend a few years just getting this one right and scaling it. Ultimately the process has to be automated just like for the Google ads. Most of the money will come from small businesses targeting locals.

Now I am going to bug Twitter a little less about going IPO, just a little less. It could now take its sweet time.

Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem
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