Twitter and its metamorphosis towards Facebook - Product Manager's Report
Has anyone realized the subtle changes being made on Twitter and how they are becoming more and more like Facebook?
The current state of Twitter -Â
 The changes To improve engagement. The 140 character tweets have a lot of information embedded in them. It can contain links, images, videos, blog posts, news articles. All this information is lost in a simple textual snippet. Expanded tweets with Images definitely improve engagements.
Better UI and focus on User profiles - Twitter has historically given lesser focus on user profile and I would not say it is the most good looking profile page. Improving this feature will definitely improve user satisfaction.
It is still a tweeting service - Unlike Facebook which is more about my friends. Twitter is first about content and then about people. I still don't follow my friends on twitter. I use twitter to track trends, get the latest news and in general be in touch with famous brands or personalities. As long as this differentiation is maintained, I think, twitter will continue to have high engagement.
I still don't have a personal reason for using twitter -Â I use twitter more as a professional platform to learn and engage with topics and start-ups. Personally, I have no reason to announce to the world what I am doing or thinking. Twitter is yet to give me a solid context for posting a personal tweet. Why should I tweet? Who am I talking to? On a professional front, I see sense in me tweeting about my latest blog posts to the world. Or a celebrity talking to millions of fans. Twitter still needs to answer, why should I use it (as a personal platform)?
All these are small changes and will not lead to any massive growth in Users. Here are some features that twitter should consider introducing.
1. Groups - Introducing groups can help twitter bring in the personalization aspect. Groups will have people with whom you are more connected and care about. One thing Twitter should be careful about is - "how members will join a group". Let me explain with an example -Â
Imagine I create a group called college-buddies. I start adding people to the group. But, here it is better to restrict the members to maximum of 10 people. It should not become a Group of all the people in the college (that is what lists are for). So I have a personal group where I can share what I find interesting in twitter. I can tweet messages directed towards a specific group. Since, everyone in the group knows me, there will be higher engagement.
Now there are 2 question that arise
How is it different from Whatsapp or Facebook groups?
How far away from twitter's core philosophy is this? (There tweets may no longer be public tweets)
The above idea is not very different from the WhatsApp and Facebook Groups. More thought needs to go into the design. Here are my after thoughts.
Another option is to create groups with hashtags. People are invited to be part of these hashtag groups. These 'hashgroups' are not the same as the existing hashtags. You can only see them if you have an invite to the hashtag (Ahh sounds complicated)
Group handles -Â These are group messaging handles, where I can create a handle for a group and everyone can contribute and converse with the group by tagging the handle. Every member in the group is part owner of the handle, he gets notifications directed towards the handle and has the choice of making it either public or private groups. The key here is ownership.. no one owns a hashtag on Twitter. People understand owning a handle. Now the question arises - "what purpose does the group handle really solve?? And how are people supposed to use it??"
Repurpose the lists into something useful. Make it an engagement channel. Lists are as good as non-existant on twitter. I see no real value add due to lists. There are no famous lists people aspire to join, there is no engagement within lists. It is a simple grouping of users.
2. Fix Conversations - Conversations on Twitter are different from every other platform. On a higher level, they are extremely simple - "Every part of a conversation is a tweet. Everything you do on twitter is a tweet". But, I feel this over simplification is not good. Simplicity is good as long as the smallest piece of the machine is easy to understand. A tweet is very easy to make, but it still does not have a reason to be made. With so much information flowing there needs to be sense of grouping of conversations which is more readily understood. I suggest a very minor change - Add the count of replies to a tweet i.e. on every tweet show the number of replies it got (similar to no:of comments on other platforms)
3. Fix User Suggestions - Twitter does a decent job of suggesting users to follow. I would like to do an AB Test by adding the following information along with the suggestions.
Last Tweet along with profile details
Summary along with profile details (my bet is on this)
Last Active date along with profile details.
4. Get rid of the Top Navigation Tabs - The top navigation panel is a distraction. I only need the "Home" tab. The information in Discover needs to be merged into my Home tab information. I really don't need another dedicated tab where I have to go and see what's trending. Notifications and Me tabs can become icons so that they occupy less real estate. People will find it when they need it.
5. Small Additions to the tweets - Use tweets to showcase the latest trending topics. Add a small "Trending icon" next to the tweet that have the recent trending topics on them. These icons will only exist as long as the topic is trending. This gives people more incentive to tweet on trending topics and people will be able to spot trending topics in their Home stream.