Introducing the Tweetstorm ™
Designing the emerging tweeting style into Twitter.
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The Calm Before the Storm…
In this post I will be exploring a new feature that I’ve prototyped and believe Twitter should introduce for an emerging construct on the platform.
In order to understand how Twitter should adopt this new construct, we need to understand why it should in the first place…
Lately at Twitter, there has been a big push within the company to attract new users onto the platform. Growth of new users within the platform is a high priority, and it most definitely deserves a great deal of attention. Twitter is one of the most remarkable networks of our generation and more people should be able to experience all it has to offer.
However, at the same time, its important for Twitter to not forget to listen to it’s existing users and especially its most fanatic or power users.
Why?
For one, the power users drive most of the content within the platform. They are the ones who do most of the tweeting. This in turn keeps regular users (the one who mostly read tweets) on the platform, while also supplying the fridge with fresh food that will attract new users.
But more importantly, many of the defining features of Twitter actually emerged from within the community, and popularized by the power users which eventually were built into the actual product:
The first #Hashtag:
The first @Reply:
The first RT:Retweet:
More recently a new construct within the platform emerged…
The Tweetstorm.
A Storm is Brewing…
This style of tweeting probably existed for years, but more recently it has been popularized by a more prominent power user named @pmarca aka Marc Andreessen — better known for bringing us less significant advances to the internet like the first real web browser, and some company called Netscape.
The first* @pmarca Tweetstorm:
Shortly after, other users started following in this style of rapid tweeting and the rest became history.
So what exactly is this style of tweeting? Let’s break it down…
A tweetstorm is a rapid series of tweets that are successively related to each other, but also part of a bigger underlying idea or point.
There are three key defining features of a tweetstorm:
- Speed: Tweets come in rapid succession to each other.
- Theme: Tweets are related to one another, but more importantly to a grander idea or topic.
- Intensity: They are loud. As a result of the speed they flood feeds to the point some people could argue is spam.
Now that we understand what goes into a tweetstorm, let’s actually see one as it would play out today.
A Feed Flood Warning is in Effect!
So you’re probably thinking to yourself right now:
“Wait a minute…I thought Twitter was to send small bite sized information. Isn’t sending a lot of tweets right away kinda like you know….spam? Why would I want to do that?”
And I would tell you yes and no. Yes in the way it’s done today, and no in the way I propose Twitter should implement it.
So let’s look at how it’s done today:
Hmm…I’m feeling a tweetstorm brewing. I whip out my shiny new iPhone 6, open up Twitter, go to the compose page and whip up my first tweet:
So straight off the bat we’re already in a shitty experience. For one, I’m sacrificing 3 of my valuable 140 characters to start my number labeling. Why am I doing that? Well, it’s because of the nuances in the way my storm will be displayed in the feed’s of my followers.
After I finish my first tweet, I’m dumped into the feed where I end up having to quickly scroll up, tap on my tweet, and continue with my second tweet.
So why are there nuances?
It’s because Twitter, as it stands today, was not designed for these rapid successive tweets.As a result people end up hacking around it to make it digestible for their audiences.
Here’s a way people found to hack around it:
After I find my tweet in the feed, I end up replying to myself and continuing with my number labeling. I have to erase my pre-filled handle and once again I sacrifice a few characters before I even begin my second tweet.
When I get to my 3rd tweet, I’d like to see where I left off so I scroll up and my keyboard drops. I then have to press the text field again to continue.
I know these are just minor annoyances but they sure do add up.
So why am I @replying to myself? Can’t I just continue and start from the number “2/” ?
I can, but then I’m not going to get this nifty design Twitter created to follow conversations, but not the ones with yourself that you’re essentially having by doing this hack.
If I’m lucky I end up with something like this. It’s not too bad. I get a nice little threaded line chaining my tweets together. It’s still a bit cumbersome in that the last two tweets of my Tweetstorm aren’t going to make sense without me pressing that “2 more replies button” to read them in succession. So why should I be seeing those tweets now anyway?
There’s also the redundancy in having my avatar and handle be displayed over and over again. You get the point that it’s MY tweetstorm. You don’t need to be reminded in each tweet that it’s coming from me.
However, more often than not…I end up with something like this:
Looks like the storm got pretty windy…my tweets end up all scattered throughout the feed and my followers really have to rely on my numbering. Throw some replies from other people in there and the storm becomes disgusting. Yuck!
I can go on and on into more nuances in consuming and composing a tweetstorm. But I think it’s pretty obvious at this point…
Twitter as it stands today was not designed for the Tweetstorm.
So what are we going to do?
The Perfect Storm.
Here’s where things get interesting. Let’s see if we can design our way out of this shitty experience that we have today. As we explore the new design we will touch on a few key concepts of the Tweetstorm as well.
Tweetstorming is for power users.
Let’s get something straight, the construct of the tweetstorm isn’t something for the average user. Most users don’t even tweet, yet alone have 5–12 tweets worth of things to say. Everyone should have the ability to tweetstorm, but it shouldn’t be encouraged by Twitter.
That leaves us with an interesting design challenge…
How can we integrate this power-user feature into the current Twitter experience without complicating the experience for the average user?
Before we get into the design, I’d like to point out that I really wanted this to look and function like something Twitter could ship tomorrow. The goal wasn’t to redesign the wheel, it was to try to seamlessly incorporate this into the existing design today.
Anyways, I feel a storm brewing…
We open up the compose page as we usually do. Except, this time instead of beginning our first tweet. We enter a little secret combination: “☁️⚡️” and just like that we’re prompted to enter into let’s call it: “Storm Mode”. So what exactly is “Storm Mode”?
Let’s tap on the ⚡️ button and see where it takes us…
A New Type of Constraint:
The beauty of Twitter is rooted in how a simple constraint of 140 characters shapes the experience of the whole platform. However, the idea of the tweetstorm as we know it today is in direct conflict to that constraint. It’s purpose is in fact to bypass 140 characters and go wild. This rebellious freedom also lends itself to abuse and improper use of what it means to tweetstorm.
What is the limit for the tweetstorm?
Is it 10 tweets?
Is it 5?
Is it 20?
There is none.
That’s the problem. The other problem is that the very purpose of a tweetstorm is to tweet rapidly in the moment but yet there have been cases where people continued their tweeting for an hour intermittently.
I propose we introduce a new type of constraint: “Time”
Once you enter into “Storm Mode” you are reminded that “You have 5 minutes (300 seconds) to make it tweet!”
That’s it.
This constraint is meant to keep your storm in the moment and to a decent size.
How did I come up with that number? I figured that it takes about 30 seconds to write an average tweet. That means in 300 seconds you should be able to get out around 10 tweets, which I believe is a digestible size for a storm.
But more importantly, this constraint adds something else to the experience for your followers. This “something else” is the secret sauce of what makes a storm exciting….we’ll shortly see exactly what that is.
But for now, let’s get back to making it rain!...urrrm I mean Tweet : )
We tap the ⚡️ button again…
Uninterrupted Streamlined Tweeting:
We get thrown into a screen where we can begin our first tweet. As soon as we enter a character the countdown begins.
There are two things note to here:
- The whole “#/’ before your tweet still exists but now it has real purpose at no cost. The “#/” will not count towards your character limit and it will also serve another purpose that I will demonstrate shortly.
- Pressing the “Tweet” button after you’re done does not dismiss the compose screen and make you go back to your feed to find the tweet to “@reply” hack it. You just continue tweeting uninterrupted as you should.
Lost your train of thought? Just scroll back.
When you’re in the middle of storming you want to make sure that each successive tweet makes sense with the rest of what you have just tweeted. The point of a storm is that it’s a continious stream of thought. Sometimes you will get stumped though. Now instead of sifting through what you just wrote amongst the replies of people responding to various tweets in your storm, you get a clean experience to go back in time and see what you’ve just posted. You can’t see it in this demonstration but it might even make sense to allow the person to edit a previous tweet.
We’re now done storming. Let’s see the other side of the coin .
How were our followers experiencing our storm?
Decluttering the Feed:
You storm with the intention for it to be loud. You want it to be seen. One way of doing that is by taking over the feed of your followers. I would even call it spamming and it is most definitely the biggest gripe people have with storming.
Currently it feels like you’re cheating the system we all agreed upon.
Another way to be seen is by standing out from the pack…or in our case, the rest of the tweets in your feed. In fact, this is the reason why tweets with pictures have higher favorite and retweet rates than just plain ‘ole text tweets. They catch your eye as you scroll through your feed.
Here’s how we’re going to do it:
There are a few things to note here so let’s take it step by step:
The first thing you should notice is that the storm is now a tweet in itself. In fact we could define the storm as a “tweet of tweets”. Grouping them together this way alleviates the spamming issue while still maintaining a big enough distinction amongst other tweets to catch your attention. Each tweet still retains its basic attributes to reply, retweet, or favorite but now you can do that to the whole storm itself.
This is key for three reasons:
- It’s consistent with the premise that the defining feature of a storm is a group of tweets that are related to each other.
- If your goal is to be seen by as many people as possible…this gives people a nice and clean way to share your storm to their followers, rather than just retweeting parts of it and leaving people trying to piece things back together.
- Each tweet still retains it’s independence and is a unit all by itself that can have it’s own reply thread but is still given context in a simple and clean way.
The next thing to note here is the “⚡️” on the upper left side of the storm. Now here is where things get interesting. Remember the secret sauce that I mentioned earlier? This is it.
There’s a special kind of experience when you catch a storm as it’s developing.
It’s that real-time live allure of Twitter, but on steroids.
It feels like you’re really in the moment and witnessing something unique happening.
Now you can actually follow the storm as it’s developing. In fact, you can even see how much time is left in the storm so you can guage if you want to reply to something now or wait to see what else the person has to tweet.
The next thing to note is the “#/” labeling before you start a tweet. I’ve touched on this earlier, and said it can now actually have a real purpose. The purpose is that it serves as a hashtag that leads back to the actual storm. Say one of the people you’re following retweeted “6/” from a storm that showed up on his feed. Now when you see that tweet, and want to actually find out the context, you don’t have to sift through the feed of the stormer to see where it came from. You just simply tap on it and you get led to the main tweet of the whole storm.
The Aftermath…
So if this convinced you that there is a better way to tweetstorm you might still be thinking that it’s antithetical to the premise of Twitter.
“Twitter is about tweets! Tweetstorming is cheating! Go start a blog or something!”
Well, that’s a fair point if you look at Twitter on the surface, but let’s try to look at it in a different way. Let’s look at things through the lens of a cell.
What are cells? Cells are the smallest structural and functional unit of an organism. When organized together, they make something greater than the sum of its parts. They make tissues, which make organs, which make organ systems, which when combined make up an organism.
Now when we look at Twitter as something that starts with a tweet and ends with a tweet we’re effectively saying that the cells of the organism are the organism. It is the final functional and structural unit.
I don’t believe that’s a correct way of looking at Twitter.
A “Tweet” isn’t an organism, it’s a cell.
and just like a distinct group of cells make up organs, a distinct group of tweets can make something greater than just a few tweets. I believe the concept of “The Tweetstorm” is one of those things. In fact, I think the organism of Twitter needs more of these concepts in order to evolve into something greater than what it is today.
But don’t take my word for it, here is a short video of the current CEO and of Twitter explaining the origin story of the “140 characters”. Listen closely to the second half about his views on what a tweet actually is.
It just might be time to start thinking outside of the Tweet…
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The GIF’s killed a lot of the quality of the prototype. If you’d like to play with the interactive prototype you’ve seen in this post, you can access it here. Remember desktop/laptop only and don’t forget to paste this: “☁️⚡️” into the field to get started.
Who am I?
I’m an engineering-minded product designer and a design-minded iOS engineer from New York City. I also happen to be looking to join a team of passionate people to work on some great products. If that interests you, lets chat: danielrak@me.com or @danielrakh
Also, you might enjoy these posts I’ve written:
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Thank you for reading!
Published in Startups, Wanderlust, and Life Hacking
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