What Twitter Should Do Next (Part 2)

In my first publication regarding “What Twitter Should Do Next”, I praised Moments but argued that Twitter should not underestimate the original Twitter product. In particular, I suggested that Twitter needed to: (1) prioritize Lists to organize who you follow into groups based on your interests; (2) encourage and even initiate the world’s conversation through a calendar of events with Q&As, debates, polls on critical issues, and round tables, (3) provide a Best Of channel letting you know of the best Tweets, Persiscopes, and Vines of the day, and (4) market to the world why Twitter by explaining why people find it valuable. These items continue to be overlooked and yet continue to be the key for Twitter.

In this second installment of “What Twitter Should Do Next”, I will focus on the mistakes I believe Twitter is making that are preventing it from having more immediate success by prioritizing these key items.

Everyone knows Twitter is not significantly growing Monthly Active Users (MAUs). Everyone knows that video and picture are worth a thousand words and that Snapchat and Instagram are having some success as a result. Everyone has a thousand solutions for Twitter. I believe those three facts as well as misleading metrics are leading Twitter astray.

First, let’s take the fact that Twitter is not significantly growing MAUs. For some, this leads to the conclusion that it is broken in a way that cannot be fixed without bold changes or that it is niche. I believe that is the equivalent of saying: “My non-intuitive prototype that I have not explained to people why to use is not selling so I am going to start over.” Yet, high-profile investor Chris Sacca in his Twitter-famous “What Twitter Can Be” blog advised “incremental and iterative approach to improving Twitter will not work. Instead, Twitter will need to take huge risks, deeply question its key assumptions, and launch materially new stuff early and often.” Sacca dismisses Lists along with other useful features as “complications that chase normal users right back out the door.” Further, Adam Bain said before Moments launched that he was looking forward to even bolder changes in the pipeline. I believe the metrics support Sacca and Bain’s positions that Twitter needs bold changes but I think the metrics are misleading. The metrics will likely show that Lists are “unsuccessful” because they are not widely-adopted. But have the metrics factored in that people like features that are easy to use and don’t take work to create? I believe management is not improving Lists because the metrics suggest it is a failure. So, management is mistakenly focused on “bolder” ideas.

Meanwhile, Facebook has come up with the app “Rooms”. The idea behind Rooms is I take an interest like “Teslas” and I go to the Tesla Room to anonymously discuss Teslas. But it hasn’t been that successful (I cannot find any ranking in Free Social Networking Apps on the iPhone). I believe this is in part because I don’t always want to talk about Tesla and in part because Elon Musk isn’t on there. But Twitter can solve those problems with a List where I can see Musk’s tweets, tweets from car analysts, and tweets from electric vehicle enthusiasts any time I want to return to that List.

Facebook also launched the app “Groups” which allows you to group your Facebook friends together for a specific thread similar to Lists. This also appears to have been unsuccessful thus far (#84 of Free Social Networking Apps on the iPhone). But Facebook is making users do all the work to create the Groups and does not have an easy way around that. Thus, the “role model” Facebook recognizes that people need content designed around their interests and groups and yet is struggling to solve the problem. However, Twitter already knows of popular Lists that you can just subscribe to. Twitter just isn’t recommending them for some reason.

The point is Twitter is better designed than all of the other sites to organize your content around your interests but is failing to take advantage. Twitter management is failing in this area apparently because it has mistakenly convinced itself it cannot grow without bolder ideas and that ideas like Lists are unsuccessful.

Second, let’s look at the importance of video and picture for Twitter. Twitter’s Moments captures video, photo and text in a cool new way. I like Moments because it brings some the best of Twitter and Vine to users without them searching for it and it is visually appealing. But the ability to interact is gone. It is a consumption tool. Moments must be worth your time to watch over all other things you could be watching right now. The competition for your eyeballs is unreal from TV to YouTube to Netflix.

Twitter’s Periscope brings a different twist than Moments because it combines conversation and video which is a perfect fit for Twitter. Yet, Periscope would benefit from organization of content like Lists and a calendar of events too. Also, Periscope conversation can be more difficult than on Twitter because a Periscope video producer cannot always respond to all the comments before they disappear and the viewer cannot read what the producer said to see what he missed. That is why Twitter is still the leader in conversing with the world. And people can add video or pictures to their tweets if they want which is a good thing. The point is video and photos are great but not everything. I cannot see what is being said about Teslas by quickly going through YouTube videos, Snapchat Stories, or my Instagram pictures. That is supposed to be done on Twitter. The problem is that it is not. Instead, I have a feed of random people about random things. Someone out there is saying right now to their screen, “just search ‘#Tesla’ and you can.” No. Where is Elon if I do that? Where are the car analysts? And why do I have to do the work to think of the search word and type it in? No, Twitter does not offer what it is supposed to offer. Thus, it is failing compared to its potential.

Third, it can be a problem that Twitter has endless ideas for fixing itself because it means that Twitter has to prioritize correctly. So far, they have not. For example, creating video within the app was not necessary. There were ways to upload video to Twitter already. Twitter championed native video as a major catalyst but then was quiet about its success after it launched. I suspect because it did not fix the issues and could have been done later. As another example, Sacca gave a long list of suggestions. Among Sacca’s suggestions, “If Twitter integrated a simple heart gesture into each Tweet, engagement across the entire service would explode.” There was a reported 6–9% rise in engagement after this change. However, the change has not moved the needle for the stock, probably because it has not caused engagement to “explode”. Again, it may have been a positive change but it did not need to be the priority. Twitter already had a favorite button that did the trick.

Fourth, Twitter’s World Series marketing ad was a failure. Otherwise, we would have heard about the positive results by now. No, instead of producing a clear ad about “Why Twitter?”, Twitter listened to misleading metrics about all the sports fans they didn’t have on the network and how young people like that fast of an ad. The confusing ad tried to show off Moments as a new way to enjoy Twitter. It seems that the world is convincing Twitter that their prototype of a product is broken and niche and they have to start over. I am telling them you have to finish the prototype and then tell people what you have and what it is for before you can reach that conclusion and you have not done that. If Twitter cannot add MAUs after organizing the product and having users tell the world what Twitter is good for, then bold changes need to be the priority. But not yet.

In conclusion, Twitter is an unfinished product that does not yet need to prioritize bold new products. Twitter just needs to organize the conversation and explain to the world what it offers.