Why Twitter’s recent updates will not change the game for them

Twitter has been my favorite social network for years. Because it empowers you with the ability to start a conversation with almost any one on this universe(who has a Twitter account). Not just that. Twitter is where a news story breaks first. But, off late Twitter’s recent changes makes me question if it still is my first choice.

Slowing user growth and falling stock price has forced the product’s management to try out more changes that meddles with Twitter’s core features. Twitter is trying to win back it’s place of being the epicentre of conversations. In other words, Twitter is trying to make more money. Recently we’re seeing more Ads on Twitter. That is at least acceptable when compared to the congesting Facebook Ads. But in pursuit of that now they’re messing up with the product’s base, the Timeline. I hate the ‘While you were away’ thing and now they’ve announced the ‘Show me the best Tweets first’ feature. This is not going to make the timeline experience better.

There are things they should focus on, that would improve the user experience with-in the product. For instance the ‘Moments’ feature just shows the stories that are popular across the entire Twitterverse. It doesn’t show stories that are trending in my geography. For instance, i live in Chennai, and below are the top trending topics in Chennai’s vicinity:

But, the stories i see under ‘Moments’ are totally irrelevant for me. This is what Twitter shows me in Moments a.k.a Project Lightning:

I’ve no idea what is going on between Kanye West and Taylor Swift. It would be great if Twitter ties the ‘Trends’ data with ‘Moments’. That would bring some life into the ‘Moments’ section and if more people started liking it, then Twitter can bring in the Ads into it. That could’ve been a different game altogether. But instead, they’re making things worser by introducing features like ‘Show me the best tweets’ .

Not just this. There are a lot of existing features that Twitter can improve. Lists, for instance, is a great feature that many people use to create curated timelines. But, to see tweets from the Lists that you’ve created/subscribed to, you need to click 3 times to navigate through 3 different pages. The Twitter team should focus on refining things like this.

On their recent earnings call, Twitter executives have stated the below:

We are going to fix the broken windows and confusing parts, like the .@name syntax and @reply rules, that we know inhibit usage and drive people away.

Let us hope, the Twitter that we all loved, will make a come back in the months to come.

Signing off…