You might have noticed that Twitter launched some changes a little while ago. Being swamped with school and such, I haven’t had the time to take a moment, sit down and blog about what’s been going on.
First – let’s run through them.
Twitter’s Most Recent Changes:
- The @ reply tab now shows you people who are following you in addition to all of your @ mentions.
- The activity bar now lets you creepily know who the folks you follow have started following, what tweets they’ve favorited (still a pointless feature) and other things of that nature.
Some are calling the changes a “stalker bar” others are praising the fact that Twitter now provides you with new insights. I honestly think they were pointless. Here are the things Twitter should have changed. I even made pictures. They’re pre activity bar – but since I wouldn’t have an activity bar – I don’t think that matters.
The Homepage
Here’s the main problem with the Twitter website – it refuses to conform to the norms created by all of the third party applications and instead wants to do it’s own thing. We’ll go through step by step.
Photos: Currently Twitter users have to upload photos on another website and then use that link on Twitter. Let’s eliminate that extra step. Upload your photos right to the website. Much like you do on TweetDeck (a third party app that Twitter owns).
Direct Messages: How often have you heard – “I sent you a DM did you get it?” Yeah no… because Twitter didn’t tell me I had a new @reply or DM. Let’s add a counter. Simple clean and effective.
Link Shortening: I’m not sure what Twitter thinks is a small amount of characters is, but in a world where I only have 140 – 20+ of them being dedicated to Twitter’s crappy URL shortening experience is not the way it works. Instead pair up with a third party service – let them do the work for you. TweetDeck has the functionality – all you have to do is implement it. Crazy. I know.
ReTweets
Everyone wants to be able to give credit where credit is due – except Twitter that is. With the current RT functionality set up the way it is, not only do you not know how many times a post was retweeted, you also don’t know by whom. I love to say thanks when people repost my content and I’m sure others do to.
By adding in the ability to RT with a comment you’ll give users back that opportunity, but in addition – tell us how many times people retweeted us. Make it a link so that we can see a little hover of all the people who did. I don’t often want to add comments to my retweets – but I do want my friends and the people I’m following to know that I helped them out a bit.
In addition – why not keep this up-to-date. Tell us how many retweets are new since our last browser refresh – and show us which ones they are – by highlighting these instances, people will better be able to understand their impact on Twitter.
Followers / Following
Also known as a hot mess in my opinion. The limited functionality behind followers is insane to me. It’s not that hard – I’m taking programming – stick those suckers into an object and let people loop through them. Well that’s a lie – it’s not as simple as I made it sound, but it’s not like asking Twitter to tell you the meaning of life.
I personally would love to know the number of followers my followers and the people I’m following have at the drop of a dime. Twitter is a conversation and if the only RTs you’re getting are from people with 5 followers you’re message isn’t really spreading. That might not be why you tweet – but still – it’s always fun to compare yourself to your friends and see who’s the most popular. Don’t pretend you don’t do it.
Wouldn’t it be fun to search and sort your friends? Maybe you’re looking for someone in particular and you know their handle starts with a b – you don’t know the rest, but you know if you went back through your followers you could find them.. Yeah good luck if they were one of your first followers. By adding search and sort functionalities users are opened up to a whole new world of possibilities.
Mutual Following
I like to know when people are following me. So I think it would be cool if you were about to see that right from their profile. There could be a little link that says @heythere (does not / does) follow @mlserra. Then you know and you can go on and live your life.
So there you have it. The changes Twitter should have made instead of the pointless ones they did. Although I will admit I do like the daily update of who followed me.
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