My Thoughts On Twitter
Nov 1 · 3 min read
What is Twitter?
Twitter describes itself as a place to discover what is happening in the world and what people are talking about right now.
How it works
Figure 1: Discover tweets on your twitter feed
Why I like Twitter?
Customer Perspective
- It allows users to keep track of what is happening in fields (machine learning, app development, startups) of particular interest.
- It allows users to start learning new topics quickly as I can discover and follow relevant experts
- It keeps users up to date about world events
Company Perspective
Twitter’s Competitive Advantage
Twitters’ competitive advantages over other social apps ( Facebook, Instagram, Reddit) are:
- Account Discovery: One of Twitter’s best features is the Retweet. It allows users to share a tweet a user has seen with its followers. This makes it easier for other users outside your personal network to discover your account. This drives people who are keen on building their own personal brands/platforms/communities to twitter. In turn, tweets from this cohort of users keep other Twitter users engaged, creating a network effect.
- Celebrities: Twitter is the communication tool of choice for Donald Trump, the president of America and a whole host of influencers and celebrities. This drives people who want to engage with them to Twitter
- Media: Members of the press around the world have settled on Twitter as their chosen platform to share their articles and engage with their communities. This has enabled twitter become the primary medium for consuming news for millions of people. This, in turn, keeps those users engaged with twitter
Business Growth Strategy
Twitter was launched in 2006 and currently has an estimated monthly user base over 300 million monthly users. Twitter initially grew via word of mouth and celebrity endorsements. Twitter is one of the few apps that were able to leverage viral growth in order to create a network effect.
What would you change about Twitter?
- Account Discovery: it is currently difficult to discover accounts based on topics they tweet about. Currently, users can search for the topic and hope they put it in their bio.
- Polls: Currently, a user can create a poll that anyone in twitter can vote in. The problem is that the user cannot view the results if the user did not vote. This ends up skewing results. Also, users do not get to see the final results of the votes.
- Public Conversations: Currently, when 2 or more people are having a conversation on Twitter it is displayed using threads. The longer the thread goes on or the more people who join, the more confusing it becomes.
What new features would I add?
- Account Discovery: To make it easier to discover accounts I would allow each twitter account to add up-to 4 topics that they tweet about. This way a user can just search for a topic and discover relevant accounts
- Polls: To make twitter polls more useful to people on twitter, I would add 2 buttons to every poll. They are:
- A follow button: This button would allow you to follow a poll so that you get notified when it finishes. This would enable you to see the final results
- A “view results” button: This button will let you see the results of the poll without voting - Public Conversations: To make public conversations easier on Twitter I would make add 2 features. They are:
- Adding 2 arrow buttons to the side of a twitter thread that allowed you to jump to the top of the thread or the bottom. This will allow you to start reading from the top of the thread easily or skip to the latest tweet.
- A button that allows you to host a public conversation between 1–5 other people in a group-style chat room that anyone on Twitter can view. On your followers feed, they would see periodic reminders that “You and X number of other people are currently having a discussion” and they would be given the option to view it. This chat rooms would allow people to have a conversation without others adding their replies. Accounts followed by people in the chat room can then request to join.