I’ve noticed something, something disturbing…I’m growing weary of Twitter.

Twitter, my beautiful Twitter, my favorite, has become a wasteland of links and self-promotion, and I know that I’m part of the problem.

We need to fix it. We need to fix it quick, before everyone leaves and we’re left with one less option to be social. Here’s how I propose we fix Twitter, and how I’m going to help.

But first, we need to start at the beginning, we need to explore what made Twitter special.

When I started on Twitter

It was a legitimate place to make new connections. I met all manner of interesting people and carried on public conversations.

The 140 character limit encouraged brevity. Now people just queue up 15 tweets in a row instead.

I spent more of my time engaging with people and far less sharing links. But even as we shared links “back then,” there were less of us doing it, so it wasn’t as noisy, we don’t have that luxury anymore.

Consequently that’s all Twitter is now…a newsfeed. It’s lost its soul; the people are gone and have been replaced with content spewing robots.

Twitter has changed

I miss the days of “I’m eating a sandwich” or other similarly, seemingly, asinine posts.

I miss the days where people were doing more than just checking their @mentions stream.

I miss the days where hashtags weren’t a marketing tactic.

Real-time vs Algorithm Controlled

One of the things I always liked about Twitter was that the home feed was in real-time. There is no algorithm determining what I see. I liked that…I still like that.

But I think Twitter needs to further evolve and make lists a more prominent function. It also needs to make filters more prominent so we can choose what we see.

In fact, I think the idea of a Home Feed on Twitter is an idea that no longer makes sense.

News -vs- Friends

One of Twitter’s biggest disadvantages behind Facebook isn’t technological, it’s the fact that Facebook is where our friends are, and Twitter is where the real time pulse of the news is. But Facebook is quickly cutting into that with their own (borrowed) trending topics feature. The only way for Twitter to compete is to borrow a page out of the Facebook playbook and get our friends there.

The only way to get our friends there is to make it so that we can easily keep up with our friends and engage in conversation.

What I’m Going To Do

Here’s the way I intend to fix Twitter for myself. I’m going to try and turn back the clock.

I’m going to be part of the solution:

The only links I’m going to share, will be from my own blogs.

I’ll share pictures natively through the app.

Otherwise, my only Twitter activity will be sharing my thoughts and engaging in conversations.

I’m going to be following one Twitter list that contains only people I know or want to speak with.

Will this fix Twitter?

There is no doubt that my individual efforts will have ZERO effect on the future of Twitter.

However, imagine if we all took a similar vow.

Imagine if we all starting using Twitter more like we did in the early days.

Imagine if 75-80% of the links disappeared overnight and instead we got the conversation flowing again.

Who’s with me? Who wants to help me fix Twitter?