A Solution for Twitter

anthony quartararo
Sep 7, 2018 · 3 min read

Without deconstructing everything that Jack Dorsey has suggested they are trying to do to improve the platform, I’ll offer some suggestions on what would resolve many, if not all, the problems plaguing the online social media network.

First, let’s remember, Twitter really is nothing more than what it was originally conceived as — a microblogging site. I think it’s fair to say, as with many things in our culture today, that the founders of Twitter had no real plan or concept for what it would become, certainly no visions for the success and problems it faced today.

The following list came from a flurry of ideas that I had intended on building what I referred to as “New Twitter” in one of my notebooks. However, the idea has stayed in the notebook and not translated to action, for a variety of reasons. Posting this here may spur ideas for others with more time, funding and expertise to take forward. Or, it may just atrophy, who knows.

“new twitter concept list”
  • Must have location — every tweet, and every user’s profile (even if not made public)
  • Must have verified, real, true name accounts — all qualified and completed accounts are “blue check” verified by default, and only those that are not qualified and completed do not have blue check mark, making it easier to see users that should be questioned with a more critical eye.
  • social sign-in and mutual authorization between other social network platforms (including 2FA or other such rigorous methodology)
  • 140, 250 & 500 character limits, longer posts are at a premium membership fee
  • better multimedia, less GIFs
  • Maps, maps, and more maps — particularly in the account analytics, especially for corporate accounts
  • richer analytics for consumers and analytics-on-steroids for corporations
  • ToS that is one-page “stupid simple” perhaps with a supplemental, longer “legal” ToS
  • ToS that are enforced, in real-time with clear and transparent criteria, parameters and a metrics page for everyone to see what’s being done to actively keep the platform in compliance
  • URLs that don’t count toward limits on individual tweets
  • Media (video and pictures) should not count toward limits on individual tweets
  • Advertising at hyper-local scale, including providing for “near me” friend finder to capture other Twitter users that favorite, retweet or respond to a tweet or thread in nearby proximity
  • Location telemetry from mobile, desktop, laptop
  • Duress feature — automatic disaster mapping functionality as well as other life-threatening conditions to help alert 911 services and friends and family. This would also lend itself to a global map in the aggregate to display to appropriate and relevant EMS type services. This concept evolved out of the fantastic work that Jessica Decker, among others, did with Twitter during Hurricane Harvey.
  • Blockchain implementation to validate and verify account owner, tweets, and locations [ originally thought this was a good, viable idea, but, it’s not.]
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