Twitter can be better

Twitter shone during Debate night. I can’t imagine watching the debates without Twitter — the fact checks, snark, and live commentary was amazing. The difference was stark when contrasted with my Facebook feed during the same time, which consisted of vacation photos and memes.

This tweet by Steven Sinofsky summed up the experience nicely.

I find myself turning to Twitter multiple times per day and each time I get great information, links, and commentary from amazing people. It is the one product that I use that is truly indispensable.

It took me 5 tries to “get” Twitter. What helped was ditching all of the recommended people and categories that Twitter suggested and curating my feed based on my areas of interest or suggestions from other people. Once I had an initial set of people I followed, the magic of likes and retweets helped me find other amazing people to learn from and follow.

My experience hasn’t been shared by my friends, many of whom have tried Twitter and bounced off the service. Far from seeing it as impactful, they found the suggested user tweets to be random and the experience of dipping in and out of the Twitter feed to be overwhelming.

Additionally, the service is too complex for the novice user, who needs to figure out how to get value from her Tweets and understand the terminology around Retweets, Replies, Likes, Lists. ( This is my fifth go with Twitter and I still don’t get .@). Placing a heavy cognitive burden on a new user to make the service useful for her is inconsiderate.

For an interest network, it amazes me that there isn’t a set of curated lists per topic/ interest that a new user could follow? Is there Apple Music equivalent of Twitter playlists that are just right for you? Could you be taught to tune or tweak your experience in a more progressive, game-like on-boarding so you can get the most value from a single-player experience before attempting to actively engage with other players?

I’d really love for Twitter (or a new acquirer) to figure it out before it runs out of time.