Is Twitter getting alarmingly stale?
For all the excitement about its effectiveness as a streamlined communications tool, Twitter is showing troubling signs of falling behind in the arm’s race given what FriendFeed is doing (social aggregation and, now, search) and what much-neglected Pownce has within its arsenal.
Twitter, meanwhile, continues to struggle with infrastructure issues while providing little or no indication that its feature set will be expanded any time soon. As a Twitter fan, here’s some things I’d like to see Twitter do:
1. Improved people search, including a recommendation engine (a la Friendfeed) of who I might be interested in following.
2. Tagging
3. The ability to send files using P2P (copy the Pownce model by providing a free service for files under a certain size, and charge a premium for larger files)
4. Email notifications alerting you about activity by a particular user or about a specific topic.
5. Easier ways to send private messages. Unless you know something Twitter ID, using the drop-down menu to go through your followers is far from user-friendly.
6. The ability to have private or semi-private group conversations.
7. A business model (advertising, premium services, etc.) so Twitter can find way(s) to make money so it can hire developers to launch more features, and harden its infrastructure.
8. A native desktop application to compete/complement products such as Thwirl. Nothing like a little competition to boost the eco-system.
9. More support for third-party developers to create plugins to expand Twitter’s functionality.
10. Buy Pownce to jump-start its feature roadmap.
8 Comments
Except for #4 and #7, this list would be better off if it was titled “Terrible ideas for Twitter”
Twitter did the right thing by focusing on stability. Adding new features while they were so unstable would have been silly.
Most of these items are being accomplished by third-parties in brilliant ways. The next thing for Twitter to do is to make their API more robust and reliable. Then third parties will really feel confident in relying on them.
If Twitter tried to capture every single revenue opportunity and to develop and deliver every feasible feature, they would not still be around, or nearly as popular as they are now. Pownce is an example of a superior product but with less focus.
Sorry, I meant #5 and #7
I wouldn’t mind the recommendation engine (or at least a “You have the following friends in common” feature as well
Your posting would be more convicing if you demonstrated you knew the difference between an “arms race” and an “arm’s race”. Bad spelling, specially one that shows you don’t know what you are saying very badly take away from your argument.
Really, what’s an “arm’s race” anyway?
Hi Mark,
Interesting post, but some of the aspects of #7 around increasing features etc, is exactly why I love twitter. This adheres to that 37signals-esque ‘Getting Real’ approach, where less is more. It makes it dead simple to use and a pleasure to look at… which is a methodology I think people should try to emulate. The competitors (pownce etc) are failing exactly because they’re more bloated with features.
All of these added features take-away from the beauty of twitter.
Better IM support would be a bonus though.
Hi Mark,
I created Twittershare to add Pownce-like file sharing support. Check it out at http://www.twittershare.com. There’s a Dashboard widget, web interface, and upload-via-email / Mobile version at the moment, with a cross-platform Adobe AIR app coming soon.
Of course I agree that this feature should be baked in, but this is a handy stopgap until then!
Cheers,
Scott
If I have understood everything, you suggest that Twitter should BE Pownce, that’s it?
Twitter is successful because of its simplicity and ease-of-use. The beauty of the service is that there aren’t many features
Cheers,
Aidan
http://www.MappingTheWeb.com
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