5 Holes That Twitter Needs To Fill (And Soon)
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.
One possible solution would be to give users some privacy options on their profiles, similar to Facebook. There only really needs to be three settings:
- Make my profile visible to everybody
- Make my profile visible to everybody logged on to Twitter
- Make my profile visible only to people I approve
Option one would leave Twitter functioning how it does now for the majority of users. By selecting option two you could stop users accessing your profile who you had blocked – anyone who tried to access your page who was not logged in would be encouraged to do so (and perhaps see a partial page, again like on Facebook). Option three would be for complete privacy.
Bottom line: when you are promised a block feature, it needs to actually do what it says.
Where’s The Retweet Opt-Out Button?
When Twitter first added their internal retweet fuction, they gave you the choice to opt-out of seeing retweets from certain people. This turned out to be very wise, but just as we were getting used to the feature they took it away again. It’s now been missing for months – and as far as I can tell we’ve never had a reasonable explanation as to why.
It’s a problem that often makes the retweets by others area unusable – or worse, redundant. We don’t all share the same tastes, and following somebody doesn’t mean we should have to see everything, especially if the option is (or rather, was) there to turn some things off.
Bring it back. And while you’re at it, let us add annotations to these new retweets, too.
UPDATE: As of July 28, this is back. Something I said?
Verification
At the time of writing, Twitter has verified just 2,808 users – a number that’s probably just a little shy of the bonafide famous people who sign up every month.
Okay, so it’s a big ask. But there are some major, longstanding celebrities, power-users and brands on the network who have never been given the stamp of approval, including @wossy, @glinner, @jimmycarr, @problogger, @copyblogger and @cnnbrk. The latter which, of course, was the #1 most-followed account on the network for the early part of 2009.
And while it’s possible that some of these folks have never actually asked to be verified, I know for a fact that some of them have – and were completely ignored. Maybe their publicist didn’t press hard enough.
And while Twitter does occasionally verify a big name, most of the time it seems to be randoms and oddities. Many of whom have often literally just signed up. Maybe their publicist pressed extra-hard. I hate to say it, but the reality is that if you’re famous and American, you appear to have a much better chance of being verified than if you’re famous and not American (un-American is a no-brainer).
To be fair, @biz, @jack and @ev aren’t verified, either, but that just supports my theory that they’re imposters.
Verification was a good idea, but it’s been handled badly. While I’d love to have my account verified, I fully understand that I’m going to be miles down the list. But verifying some famous folk while ignoring others – many of whom are relative unknowns – seems more than a little ridiculous.
A Better Personal Messaging System
We’ve been here before, but it’s still (tragically) true – Twitter’s direct message system sucks. Facebook’s internal message system sucks, too, but it’s still better than Twitter’s. At the very least we need a way to mass-delete unwanted messages, a search feature, threaded conversations and group DMs, but it would also be nice to have folders, manageable spam filters and some control over who we allowed to send us DMs – even if we weren’t following them (for example, maybe you could tick a box that let verified users or a select group of brands contact you privately, with the onus then on Twitter to ensure they didn’t abuse this privilege).
Conclusion
There are many other things I could list – a decent internal (and editable) filter system is long overdue on Twitter, for example – but the issues, bugs and oversights above are, to me, the most concerning at this moment in time.
What about you? Which Twitter holes, glitches and bugaboos are giving you the most grief?
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This author completely misjudges what the Verified System is for. From the post, it seems like they are posing it as a Famous Person list, where anyone who is somewhat famous can get a verified sticker. However, the original intent was to make a distinction between real and fake accounts. If Bill Gates made a Twitter account, and 12 other people claiming to be bill gates popped up, then the actual Bill Gates would get a sticker. However, I don't think that CNN Breaking News, Copyblogger, or Problogger are ever really confused with anyone else. So what is the point of verifying them?
For the same reasons that @scobleizer and @mashable are verified. It isn't simply about separating the real accounts from the fakes – Twitter's imposter policy is meant to deal with the latter (meant being the key word) – it's about making the statement that this person, or this brand, is genuine. There are lots of unverified (but genuine) accounts on Twitter that have copycats, and there are lots of unverified (but genuine) accounts on Twitter who have applied for verification but have, for whatever reason, not been granted the privilege. Yet many minor celebrities and near unknowns have. That is the point.
Twitter has simple lists. What it needs is a way to use list as filters. Selecting a list at present is like viewing your feed with a flat filter. I'd like to be able to filter out my verbose_twitters list from my feed at times. There's no way to filter out, only in. Twiiter could expand on that with multi-pronged filtering but a 'filter out' would be a good start.
I agree with you about being able to mass delete messages. Another thing I find cumbersome is navigating through my list of followers, there is no way to jump to the front of the list, other than the “more” button at the bottom of the page. It would be much more convenient to have numbered pages. The “search for” is handy only if you remember the exact spelling of who you are looking for.
They said the rewteet button was temporarily removed while they fix something or other – with its status per person you follow frozen until they return the facility. Oh how I wish I had turned it off for more people before they removed it and froze them. I can live with not letting some people back in who have reformed their retweeting habits, but to stop other incompatible retweeters I've had to consider unfollowing – which is a touch harsh.
If I recall correctly they said they were almost ready to bring it back 2 months ago.
Excellent well researched post. Second point about Better Privacy Solutions makes immediate attention. Because even if I have blocked someone he/she can see my tweets simply by logging out & visiting my profile.
Well I agree with most if not all of what you've said but before Twitter can get anything new added they are going to have to fix the mess they have now. They can't reliable offer basic services on anything approaching constancy.
So Twitter like all of the social media sites has many ways it could improve their system but first they have to get it working. That's just not happening now. There is no time of the day or night I've found that I can get anything but constant problems with sending, updating, or receiving any part of their stream.
Soon it won't be can we improve Twitter it will be can we save Twitter. Lets hope they wake up before it's too late. I would hate to be posting on FaceBook my eulogy for Twitter.
Yes blocked only means that they can't send you tweets but they can still see your tweets AND they can still send tweets out mentioning you by your tweeter @name.
Blocked should mean that they can't read, send, or comment on your tweets as well as not be able to send tweets containing your tweeter @name
Anything else leaves you open to abuse at the hands of those who chose to continue to stalk or harass you on twitter
Great post! I agree with all that you said. It would be nice to see Twitter add a function so that you could better manage/search your followers/following similar to how one accesses their friends on Facebook. I'm sure our future generations will be excited when they get to beta test this feature.