9 changes that could make Twitter better

4 months ago

Twitter has released its latest set of financial results, but the numbers weren’t the big story – instead it was some of the comments from senior staff on the conference call that followed it that caught the eye.

Interim chief executive and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey said several things that will have made investor shift in their seats uncomfortably; that new initiatives and features had “not yet had meaningful impact on growing our audience”, and that “simply said, the product remains too difficult to use”.

Surprisingly frank remarks from the man at the top of the Twitter empire, and it raises the question; what could Twitter do to right its apparent wrongs?

1. Improving the looks

Just last week, Twitter decided to remove the feature that enabled users to set their own profile wallpaper. Everything turned off-white, with the site confirming that only their small list of pre-approved backgrounds would now be available on profiles as screens were looking too messy, and the correct information wasn’t rising to the surface.

But still, Twitter doesn’t look great. Even now, with the site look established in the public psyche it doesn’t feel as familiar as Facebook or even Instagram. The site doesn’t seem to have a natural hierarchy to it, and Twitter needs to do a better job of clarifying which aspects of a page are the most important.

2. Remove the character limit

It remains one of the most regularly cited pet peeves with Twitter – the meagre 140 character limit on tweets still bothers many – despite the fact they’ve had nine years to get used to it. Other social networks don’t have such limits, and the fact that Twitter has already removed the limit in Direct Messages suggests they know it’s a sticking point too.

3. Improve abuse report record

At the beginning of the year, now departed CEO Dick Costolo admitted he thought the site “sucks” at dealing with online trolls and cases of cyber abuse in general. Steps have been taken since then to sure up the system, with a new, simpler reporting process introduced.

Earlier this month Twitter also created a new Safety Centre that details how the site works, and should be used – with content and explainers aimed at different age groups.

However the problem remains, and until Twitter has a better grasp of the darker side of its use, it will continue to drive some users away.

4. Work on filters

It says quite a lot about a service when many users choose to stick to third party apps rather than the native service because of certain features. The one in question here is filtering. While in the main Twitter app it is possible to block or mute entire accounts, filtering out certain hashtags and subjects isn’t possible in native Twitter.

But turn to a service such as Tweetbot or Tweetdeck, and more options become open to you as a user to personalise and streamline what you see on your timeline. Twitter should take note of such things and embrace them as ways to innovate and improve their own service.

5. Sharpen the message

Another of the interesting quotes from Dorsey on the financial result conference call was on communication, and how specifically, Twitter hasn’t done a very good job of telling people why they should use it.

“We have not communicated why people should use Twitter nor made it easy for them to understand how to use Twitter,” he said.

That’s quite an admission, and one that certainly has some weight when you spend time on the site compared to say a Facebook. Whereas the Mark Zuckerberg-founded site is always laden with photos of friends and updates from them, Twitter is more a mash-up of musings from people you like but may not know, news, random chat and spam. Until some clarity on the timeline can be found, communication is likely to remain an issue.

6. Conversation chains

An issue that was mentioned as far back as 2009 by TIME, the endless pop-ups that clog your timeline from a conversation between two people you happen to follow gets old fast.

The instant nature of Twitter can give it the illusion of being a messaging service sometimes, something that you rarely see occur on Facebook walls these days.

7. Spambots

Twitter is keen to up the number of active accounts it has, but in some ways they’ve been getting them in the wrong way. Spam accounts remain an issue, and almost every Twitter user out there can attest to seeing a random account follow and direct message them at some point or another.

Twitter needs to make it harder for spambot accounts to be created, with greater scrutiny placed on account creators, and the sort of things they post. Again, cleaning up the timeline would solve a lot of problems.

8. Hashtag algorithm

Hashtags are one of the best things about Twitter – enabling users to jump into a global, topical conversation in a single click. However, there are also very sensitive things, with the difference between writing out a number in letters or digits enough to throw you off the hashtag in some cases.

Twitter is smart enough to groups tweets with the same keywords together, but on occasions hashtags containing numbers can get confused. Twitter must work on tightening that algorithm.

9. Promoted Tweets

Sitting at the top of the Trends section for no other reason than they have paid to be there – promoted tweets are also working their way in user timelines when it’s already been established that area is crowded enough.

So, quite a to-do list to be getting on with, but Twitter staff will need to roll up their sleeves if they harbour any hopes of ever catching the likes of Facebook.