Twitter’s Web UI Is A Mess

As you can see in the screenshot above (in French, sorry), Twitter’s UI is a mess. It might be old news to some of you but as an active Twitter user mostly using the excellent third-party mobile client, Tweetbot, I hardly ever visit Twitter’s official website. And today, as I stumbled onto it, it struck me how awful the experience was. First off, there is no clear delineation between each tweet. It looks like an endless flow of text and as I scroll it’s hard to tell when a tweet starts and where it ends. That’s not counting the ads, the “What you missed”, the “So-and-so liked this” tweets that break the holy chronological flow that Twitter users have come to love and cherish.
This is compounded by the fact that Twitter seems to think I’m really interested in knowing who liked a tweet. This is the first piece of data that is displayed in the tweet “card”, disrupting the hierarchy of data. Because clearly the Twitter name and handle of the author of a tweet should sit atop, above the fold. Then comes the interaction bar at the bottom. The spacing is… weird. The numbers are too far off their corresponding icon, divorcing them slightly from the meaning they’re supposed to bear. Plus the whole bar looks a bit meh. Gray icons, random numbers, with weird spacing. The whole thing doesn’t convey a sense of unity and meaning. It takes a few seconds to figure out what means what. And that enveloppe icon is a bit out of place (and character) as all other icons are there to let users interact with the tweet: comment (which really is reply), retweet or like. But the enveloppe lets you send a private message. To anyone. Not even to the person in the tweet. Again. It’s a mess.
One final thing is the down arrow which usually symbolizes that some content will collapse.

Here one would assume the Twitter card can expand to reveal more content but instead, it reveals a pop-up menu that basically brings up a bunch of options that couldn’t be fitted on the page. This goes from copying the tweet link to blocking or reporting the user. You can even say you don’t like the tweet. Not sure what that means or what’s it for. I bet no one ever clicked on this button. Oh and you can add the tweet to your moments. Because Moments are such an important feature that Twitter thought it’d be great to hide it behind a pop-up menu. Go figure. Anyway, Twitter should rethink that menu because casual users rarely — if not never — browse menus.
And as I marvelled at how bad Twitter’s website is, it occured to me that using the official Twitter service (web or native) could be compared to using Android. Google offers a Vanilla flavor of Android, free of unnecessary apps and features, while all other smartphone manufacturers offer a watered-down, junkware-filled version that cripples the user experience. Only in this case, Twitter doesn’t offer the Vanilla experience, only the worst one.
So please, Twitter. Fix your web experience. It could be much better. And it should.
