If you stop and think about the design of Twitter you will see a lot of features that can be improved upon. The functional design and overall quality of comments leave a lot of room for improvement. Below are the top 5 design problems I see with Twitter and how I improved them when designing TrailSix.
- Problem: Twitter Makes You Follow People. I Want To Follow Topics.
The quote above is taken directly from the Twitter About page. They claim the service is a way to connect to your interests, but then they make you follow people. When you first login to your account they have you search for topics that interest you and then show you a list of suggested people to follow who write about these topics. Does this make sense? If I’m interested in a topic why can’t I just follow the topic? The people I follow rarely stick to the topic I was interested in anyways.
Solution: TrailSix lets you follow topics you are interested in instead of following people who may or may not write about those topics!
- Problem: Hashtags Are Great, But You Are Limited To Just One
Hashtags are a great way to categorize messages. Fortunately (for Twitter), it was the Twitter users that created them not the site designers. Here is a quote straight from their Help page defining hashtags.
Twitter users created hashtags because following people doesn’t keep you on topic. The hashtag now keeps you on topic, but this creates a new problem. You can only track one hashtag at a time. This leads to an overwhelming number of messages scrolling on your screen. It can be too much information, especially for a hot topic, with no way to further filter the topics.
Solution: TrailSix lets you combine multiple tags to filter content to only the topics you’re interested in!
- Problem: 140 Characters Works, But Leads To Undesired Effects
The 140 character limit of tweets was established so the service could be compatible with SMS messaging. This has been noted as one of the main reasons people originally adopted the technology. It’s easy, quick and can be challenging to get your message across in that little space. However, having a commenting system that is so simple and quick without prohibiting any content has led to undesired effects. According to a study by Pear Analytics, one undesired effect is that 40% of tweets are pointless babble. Add the spam and self promoting posts to that and 1 out of every 2 tweets you view are worthless.
According to another research project more than half (54%) of people access the popular social media service with their mobile phone. I’m sure the numbers continue to rise with the growth of mobile phones. I contend that a vast majority of the 54% of mobile users actually access the site via their mobile web browser as opposed to sending SMS text messages. The 140 character limit has become more of a novelty than a necessity given current technology.
On TrailSix, I am entertaining the idea of limiting the number of comments to 140, or possibly closing replies after 140 minutes!
Solution: TrailSix does not limit the number of characters. Instead we include an Expand/Collapse link when viewing posts.
- Problem: @ Replies Make For Poor Conversation Tracking
Twitter is certainly not the medium for lengthy conversations, but it would be nice if there was a better way to have discussions. I find Twitter to be a fire and forget medium more so than it is conversational platform. There is a reply button that’s essentially a shortcut to put @username in a new tweet. It could be much better. I want threaded discusssions.
Solution: TrailSix has threaded conversations with replies two levels deep.
- Problem: Quantity over Quality
Quality is king not Quantity. Too much becomes overwhelming very fast. Filtering is helpful, but let’s promote quality posts instead of post counts. Let’s promote quality connections to topics you’re interested in instead of huge numbers of followers. This is easier said than done and it has more to do with the end users and the culture they desire. However, it begins with the design!
Solution: TrailSix promotes a culture of quality over quantity. Members can report comments and replies that violate our Terms of Service and Trail Rules.
