Gaga even had a celebrative message about her new position as the ‘Queen of Twitter’ for her fans:
“This is Lady Gaga, queen of Twitter. I wanted to thank all of my beautiful little monsters for following me. Thank you for beginning my reign as Twitter queen. May you always have soft cuticles while tweeting. May you never have carpal tunnel. … I vow to always tweet and tweet again.”
In the scheme of things, it seems fair enough. Gaga is arguably the hottest celebrity on the planet, and Britney… isn’t. Yeah, okay, you don’t care, but almost six million people do. That’s a lot of swing. Not forgetting, of course, the 11+ million fans she also has on Facebook.
What price former #1 Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) being outside of the top 10, and maybe even the top 20, in a year’s time?
I moaned about Twitter’s new suggestions for you/who to follow feature last week, but despite this I was kind of hoping I was being my (occasional) curmudgeon self and their touted ‘algorithm’ was going to right itself and eventually suggest people I might actually want to follow. You know: interesting people.
No such luck. All week long it’s been nothing but individuals who are either members of the suggested user suggestions list, random verified users and people or brands who have the slightest connection to me because I said something loosely connected about them once. While drinking.
I mean, it’s been accounts like Oprah Winfrey, for Christ’s sake. Not to mention Stephen Fry and Alan Davies, one of whom I have zero interest in following, and the other who I couldn’t even if I wanted to.
Twitter’s had a torrid few months and continues to have problems with error rates and API calls, but that’s simply scratching the absolute tip of the bugs and issues iceberg.
Here are five big holes that Twitter needs to fill.
Staff
Twitter is clearly understaffed. The company is actively hiring – there are 39 vacancies at the time of writing – and that’s a good sign, but they really need to step it up.
The company has documented their void in engineering, but of equal concern is the size of their support team. @Delbius et al do the best they can, but more often than not support enquiries still get little more than an auto-responded list of frequently asked questions and a rapidly-closed ticket.
I’m not sure exactly how many of their 241 current employees work in support, but I do know that only three of the 39 vacancies are in this area. In both cases, it isn’t enough – only 11% of my readers rate Twitter’s support as good to excellent. A whopping 79% rate it as below average to terrible.
Better Privacy Solutions
As I’ve documented on various occasions on this blog, Twitter’s block is not actually a block at all. The only way to get true security on your updates is to make them private. There needs to be a middle ground.
The most beautiful tweet the world has ever seen has been announced by @stephenfry at The Hay Festival (@hayfestival), an annual literature event that takes place in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, in Wales.
It’s cute. The winner, Marc MacKenzie (@marcmack), is from Canada, and entered no-less than 35 times. You can read all of his entries here.
A little excessive, perhaps. When asked about this approach, MacKenzie explained that it “was hard to choose one as when I come up with a good one, I’m proud of them.”
Twitter has made some long overdue changes to the algorithm for its trending topics feature, adjusting the focus to breaking news and immediacy, as opposed to things that are always trending.
The new algorithm identifies topics that are immediately popular, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis, to help people discover the ‘most breaking’ breaking news from across the world. (We had previously built in this ‘emergent’ algorithm for all local trends, described below.) We think that trending topics which capture the hottest emerging trends and topics of discussion on Twitter are the most interesting.
The good news? This should mean the end of Justin Bieber, although I’ll believe it when I see it. But looking at global trending topics right now, his name isn’t in the top ten, possibly for the first time in, oh, ten to fifteen millennia.
Bieber – and his fans – are a little upset, and he’s even taken to contacting Twitter directly, who have responded.
Could it really be true? Could the Bieber be vanquished for good? Don’t count on it – “Jieber” is trending as we speak. Clearly, the rabid insanity of teeny boppers will not be quelled so lightly.
No such luck. All week long it’s been nothing but individuals who are either members of the 
Twitter is clearly understaffed. The company is actively hiring – there are 
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