In case you missed the news, Twitter announced a new election page that will help its users filter all the election tweets across its network so users can find what they’re looking for as soon as possible. Twitter claims it decided to launch the service after seeing a spike in the number of tweets surrounding the election and the candidates.
The page is different than your run-of-the-mill Twitter page and it does a fine job of finding what you want, when you want. But it highlights an important point that shouldn’t be overlooked: Twitter needs more of these pages.
One of the most appealing aspects of Present.ly, a Twitter clone for the enterprise, is its ability to offer groups. In other words, if you own a company and you only want management to correspond on Present.ly without letting the other employees see what they’re saying, it’s quick and easy to set that up. But in the world of Twitter, you can’t create groups among your friends.
But what if you could create a group of like-minded individuals with interests much like your own on Twitter, regardless of whether or not they’re your friends? It would not only appeal to the majority of users who are trying to meet new people who are “in” to the same things, but it will help Twitter finally address some of its users’ desires.
And now that the election page has launched, we know that it’s possible. After all, how many people who couldn’t care less about the election will really go to that Twitter election page? What Twitter has done with that page is create an environment where people who care about the election and want to see what everyone else thinks can congregate and have a real discussion on the topics that interest them.
That functionality provides significant value to users and it adds a totally new layer of usability that simply can’t be overlooked. Twitter should start creating pages on other popular topics, like sports or celebrity gossip — things that a large group of people can get behind.
Once that proves successful (and it will), Twitter can use that $15 million in funding it just raised to give some of that functionality to its users. Why can’t I create a writing group on Twitter? Why can’t you create a TechCrunch reader group? Both would help us connect with those who have similar interests and we can probably do a better job of meeting new people and getting to know others through Twitter.
Twitter offers an experience that appeals to those who want to only converse with their friends. But now that it has launched an election page, it’s abundantly clear that there’s simply no reason why you can’t create groups to extend the functionality of Twitter and create an experience that goes beyond the basic functionality already being offered.
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Honestly I think it comes down to the fact that it’s taken Twitter this long just to get some stability in their product that they have been afraid of expansion. Now that the “fail whale” has had less sightings, maybe they will start thinking about the future.
Gives us a few new features such as the following:
* Groups or Friends lists
* Statistics (how did you find my twitter, how many times did you visit, etc)
* Longer “tweets” for a premium member
* File uploads in a Pownce like manner.
* etc
Just my 2 cents.
“Longer “tweets” for a premium member” doesn’t make sense
MMS via a gateway to carriers isn’t really available yet… How can I receive longer tweets on my cellphone?
No clue, never used MMS for Twitter. Twitterific works great for me.
I was referring to creating a “premium members” service much like Pownce to allow for more features. One of those features would be more than 140 characters in your tweets.
While it is true that SMS usage has imposed message length, it is also true Twitter could make longer messages split into multiple message for SMS delivery or just truncate with ‘…’ allowing people to “click thru” if they want (or are able).
The question is how would change usage and user experience of the service? I believe these two issues are of concern to the company and many users.
using … (or .. to save a character and distinguish from use of other … “regular” ellipses inside the tweet) would be sufficient if Twitter then simply fused two or more tweets at the user interface level (no extra hits on the database).
I am in the process of making a few custom changes to the Wordpress Twitter Tools plugin, to do just that for tweets going into a “daily digest” or similar post, i.e. create paragraphs from multiple fused .. tweets.
Re: the list subsegmenting, I’ve been calling for that for a while now. Then again, the ways to search/sort friends lists isn’t particularly intelligent in other Social Networking apps either, e.g. Facebook does allow sublists, but you have to manually assemble them instead of being able to do a full text search over their profile and wall posts to see if they are an interest match.
* Groups or Friends lists - DEFINITELY, TOP PRIORITY. OTHERWISE IT WILL LEAD TO DIFFERENT TYPES OF TWITTER LIKE SITES LIKE TWITTERMOMS
* Statistics (how did you find my twitter, how many times did you visit, etc) - MAYBE
* Longer “tweets” for a premium member - NO. DEFEATS THE PURPOSE
* File uploads in a Pownce like manner. - WHY DO YOU WANT TO COMPLICATE TWITTER? I THINK ONE OF THE BIGGEST ADVANTAGES OF TWITTER IS ITS SIMPLICITY: STATUS UPDATES IN 140 CHARS. FILE UPDATES, PHOTOS ETC ETC WILL MAKE IT A WHOLE DIFFERENT THING, STHG SIMILAR TO DIARY.COM
ONE MORE THING TO ADD TO THE LIST WOULD BE ENHANCED SEARCH ON KEYWORDS. LIKE I WANT TO SEARCH FOR PEOPLE WHO TALK A LOT ABOUT ADVENTURE SPORTS OR STAY NEAR ME AND VISIT SIMILAR EVENTS LIKE I DO.
Thanks for yelling at us
Twitter has an API that they would rather other services just used their underlying architecture to create group functions.
Type louder I CAN’T HERE YOU!
T seems like more of a “distraction app” than one that a consumer or business would use to improve efficiency.
You don’t need to be ‘chatting’ on twitter all the time and thinking on a tweet shall I have a sandwhich or a coffee ? - it can be used to let people know you just added something interesting to your blog…. like a new product or service or just that you added a new blog - how do you think I found your post ? - I’m following Michael’s tweets and when he posts a blog he tell folk that are following him via a headline of latest blog post - which is how I got here - no social chattering or distractions needed !
thanks zara,
I need to eat breakfast. your right, what was i thinking?
When I think of Twitter i think of the homepage. T does not have a business feeling to its look, feel, or appearance. Feels like a ladies love bird site.
Groups will be one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
If only search engines would organize there results into custom groups with a strategic layout.
http://professionallocator.ning.com/groups
GroupsLocator.com
Stop spamming.
Why would he stop spamming? techcrunch doesn’t care. So basically TC is saying, we don’t mind, if you don’t want to read spam , stop reading comments.
An advice to Craplocator.com , if you want people to use your service, focus on making it useful and appealing. Read a bit about marketing, keeping people is as important as attracting people, you get a lot of views with spam, ok, how many of they return… none? well, stop wasting your time and ours. I really want you to succeed so you stop posting crap.
Ask yourself, what will be your opinion about twitter if techcrunch make a post about how twitter or any other is spamming blogs to get new visitors…
@lala-c What part of my comment hater video did you not understand? http://seesmic.com/video/QTr4Qavbu5
Not here for traffic. see any ads on my site? I am here as a volunteer. This is a Share, Show and Tell site. When any of you fools have something to share with the community bring it out. love to see it.
I dont blame you or any of the other comment haters for being frustated that you have nothing of substance to share with the community.
where is your site clown. your a nobody hiding in a closet. take it to seesmic and put your lips where you head is. just one right click away.
TC is my homepage. get used too it.
@ kristy g - thanks for the reminder about yammer. All yammer needs to do is stay on course for business and consumer efficency and they could potentially dominate this arena. I can see the headlines now.
“Yammer drops Hammer on all the slow pokes.”
Money is not the only thing someone can seek, maybe you are in your 40s crisis trying to do something great with your live. Well the same advice focus on building a great site instead of spamming. I woudn’t mind if you share something with substance, but that site is crap that’s what makes me mad. But then again, if your site where good, you wouldn’t need to spam. Now that i understand that you had a sad life with no achievement im not angry at you anymore, i feel sorry. Hugs
@OpinionLocator.com - Think there is a business case for Twitter [or Twitter-esque application]. Yammer was recognized at TechCrunch50 for just that -
“Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: ‘What are you working on?’”
Think could be immensely useful. Know it would help me stay connected to my team/what’s going on when working remotely [which is frequent].
twitter groups — when?
There’s something to be said for simplicity…. Oh wait, doesn’t twitter have an api? Instead of writing and complaining about it build something to group users…
As for me I find it refreshing that twitter hasn’t fallen into a full-scale social network trap.
It’s called TweetDeck.
i LOVE tweetdeck.
i was a mediocre to non-existent twitter user before i discovered tweetdeck.
the only thing i’d still like to see is threaded replies.
So you follow groups instead of individuals? I like ….
We at Edmodo have groups too, not sure why it’s so “hard” for twitter.
Maybe it is because you have no vision and completely ripped off and riffed on Twitter to make a service to your linking?
They would rather be the underlying layer and have their API used for such purposes, wither by something like twhirl, alerthingy, or tweetdeck.
*You people* are frustrating…
*yay* i hope this happens soon. i’ve been manually trying to keep a China group together via an account called @chinalist then tell people to follow all the people its following to connect with china folks on twitter. talk about a scotch tape job for user experience.
this. would. solve. that. problem. fingers crossed. yay.
Its easy to have the idea, its more difficult to add them to an existing live product. Twitters problems are that they grew too large too quickly, they are ironing that out now, it takes time when your trying not to break everything.
I haven’t personally seen the fail whale for months.
I like the groups idea though.
IMHO they should buy twitscoop for a start, as they did with summize…
I agree that groups - or some sort of additional filtering is needed I’d sort people into different streams depending on their niche - something like a “top friends” app would be useful too.
Something like what you are suggesting should CERTAINLY be split out from the main component of twitter, like myspace music of myspace comedy. It would be a shame for a twitter celebrity gossip to find its way into our pure and simple twitterverse.
There are many things they can do depending on the direction they want to take.
They already have Twitter groups.
They’re called chat rooms. And they’re infested with arguing, bickering and spambots.
Twitter’s ultimate value is in taking the IMMEDIATE temperature of what people are talking about.
Tweetdeck has that built in with its link to TwitScoop.
Watching topics ebb and flow is fascinating and lets you drill into the people talking about them.
Unfortunately we are starting to see tweet spam aimed purely at polluting the Twitscoop topic popularity list. I think Twitter will be forced to create a way to authenticate a user account — either by premium membership or only validating the topics of those with a certain number of tweets.
I think Twitter will be bought by someone like Google who could easily integrate the hot topics being discussed into their search page.
Google has jaiku which has been suerior in features from day 1.
You really believe the number of tweets is proportional to someone’s credibility? Followers would be a better measure (like links/ page rank).
sounds good, but there is a potential flaw.
This idea is premised on truthful tweet. Afterall, news is only valuable if it’s fact, and not gossip. However, if twitter is gamed by spammer who overtly lie about tweets for personal, or commercial gain, or the service is abused by deceitful marketers who spin truthiness to affect consumer behavior, this idea will fail, since you can’t trust the stream of tweets.
So yall better look out for the truthiness quotient of ‘em tweets.
What Twitter needs to do to remain relevant and useful is to allow users to create their own topical pages, searches, etc. Once this feature has been activated, sharing our pages with one another (similar to del.icio.us) will make the entire system more meaningful and much much richer.
can someone please explain what this twitter shite is?? somthing for 5 year olds??
Excellent question Mr. Nuts.
When I first evaluated Twitter a couple of years ago and immediately surmised that it was absolutely worthless to me, I asked myself whether I was being objective, or maybe a little bit lazy and reluctant to embrace change. I hung in there in evaluating Twitter to make sure I was giving it a fair shake (as I watched in amazement as it become so clearly important to so many people that I otherwise respect).
But my ultimate view on Twitter remains exactly the same as my initial reaction. A social platform that facilitates the publishing and sharing of the world’s most inane babbling - at a time when most of us still have a high percentage of co-workers who can’t even manage their email inbox. I periodically (once every month or so) do searches on Twitter (http://search.twitter.com/) as part of my ongoing analysis. And each time I check a friend or former colleague’s Tweets, I encounter the most mind-numbing small talk type of content that I already go out of my way to avoid … and *every* time feel great about my decision not to participate.
This either says something about the quality of my friends & colleagues, my anti-social behavior, how consistently Twitter-generated content sucks … or all three.
But do a Twitter search (http://search.twitter.com/) on any theme that you care about / follow, and the content results have the nutritional value of cotton candy. For those who enjoy Twitter, fantastic for you. But the amazing volume of publicity that Twitter is getting in IT Trades, blogs and business press seems severely undeserved to the rest of us. And it sure seems that a lot of the hot air Twitter evangelism is being generated by self-proclaimed social tech visionaries with selfish motivations (blog traffic, sell books, sell consulting, promote a product, etc.) to build their own Twitter followings.
http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter
I’m with “Harry Nuts”. What exactly is the draw of Twitter again?
Jason Kiesel
Founder & CEO
http://www.freedomspeaks.com
I just don’t understand how Twitter makes money, when I don’t swee any form of advertising on their microblogging service. But, they are good for getting viral traffic back to your site. I can say that much…lol
Actually this could be the beginning of a business model. They can finally put some advertising against this page and it could be semi-targeted.
I’m teaching a doctoral course on educational technology. Recently several of my students prompted me to wonder if all of these groups and feeds aren’t limiting the kind of information that we have access to. Obviously, we have access to far more information than ever before in history. However, if we select only that information that we want to receive it’s likely that we won’t come across other information, by chance, that we might find useful and interesting.
what do you think?
i think that’s how the world already works, andrew. if i don’t like the kind of news one station is bringing to me, i’ll watch another. if i don’t like one kind of book, i’ll read another. to come across information by chance, you have to set up the possibility of that happening — no matter what kind of information nor what medium it’s carried upon.
i think what the internet changes is the equation is not the ability to “hide” from information you don’t want to hear, but the ability to find much, much more of the information you DO want to hear, making you feel even more certain of your position than you might have if you were relying upon books, magazines and like-minded friends.
Did you see Nick Carr on the Colbert Report yesterday evening? This was the spirit of their “discussion” … that the manner the Internet serves up info affects the type of info that we seek out, and that our minds are starting to behave like the browsers / tools we use. Link: http://www.comedycentral.com/c.....eId=185711
Solving this goal is Googles ultimate aim. It’s organizing all the worlds’ information, so it can one day push it to you via an AI assistance program like ‘Emily’– think ‘computer’ from star trek.
use case scenario:
Cindy, an 8 year old, has to do a home work assignment on trains from the 1860s. Cindy asks Emily, “Find information on 1860s train.” Emily returns diaries of the railroad worker, genealogies of the railmen (text or audio), American folk music from that period (audio), photographs of the workers (projected images), contemporary documentaries on the theme, etc. Cindy CREATIVELY decides to aggregate the information together to make an animated documentary of the railway workers, producing an original score, by telling Emily to do it all, and iMail it to her teacher. Homework is completed in 10 minutes. next.
The next generation will be the shuffle generation in which knowledge is ubiquitous, and easily accessible as to be of minimal value. What will differiantiate you from your competitor is how you creatively use the knowledge. It will be a creative economy in which we will shuffle information into new epistemological structures for utilitarian purposes.
ON that note:
It’s the social network for people sick of social networks.
Watch & Link from:
http://bit.ly/bitter-dot-com
I like the group idea. I mainly joined Twitter to meet more people in the bay area as I am planning on moving there in the next year. I would like to network and find some people that are into the same things as I… Start ups, development, web 2.0/3.0, online marketing and SEO. I think a group idea would work much better then having to search around for people that are into the same things and in the same city…
THAT was awesome
Folks,
Groups are great but I think it’s more about the partnership of EVENTS and GROUPS. People in groups are interested in unique events that identify the group: an NCAA football game, a concert, a BMW enthusiasts meetup, a new surgical procedure taking place remotely, a television show, a political debate, a lecture, or conference keynote address, etc. People in groups generally don’t care about the minutia in each other’s lives (do you care that someone in your group went buy groceries?).
I and a few others have just created the solution to this: G-SNAP! (WEB: http://www.gsnap.com, MOBILE: http://m.gsnap.com) and we are currently in alpha. G-SNAP! is an on demand social networking product where people gather together to share in a common passion (an event). Once the event is over, the social network too is over. There’s no pressure to become friends or to “connect”. Here are some of the features we’re excited to announce today:
- individuals ‘Snapcast’ LIVE events via a computer or mobile phone. A Snapcast is a stream that updates a public audience (group) on the latest updates of an event via text, pics, video, audio…”play by play” action if you will.
- the ‘Snapcast’ can be viewed LIVE via a computer or mobile web browser. The Snapcast remains archived when finished.
- the audience can interact with the Snapcaster and the audience during the event
- a central access point is provided and searchable by keyword to find events/groups that interest you
- G-SNAP! can be used as both a consumer or enterprise application
- private, password protected snapcasts are possible
In short, if you are passionate about an event, Snapcast it to the world! And if you can’t be there check with G-SNAP to see if there’s a Snapcast available!
WEB: http://www.gsnap.com
MOBILE: http://m.gsnap.com
Groups on Twiter is a HUGE mistake.
One that most social applications make but a big mistake nonetheless.
Here’s why.
Currently to use Twitter requires a very simple mental model of how to use it:
- i.e. send in 140 chars of what you are currently doing. Do this via the tool/method of your choice (web site, SMS, desktop app, mobile app, IM)
The only - and fairly small - additional layer is to decide whether to invoke TWO primary additional features - starting your message with an @ or to send a private message using a d convention (or even easier using the direct message feature of the web interface or most client software. And the website and most software also helps you generate @reply’s as well.
And that is it.
Your tweet then enters your twitter history (and from there to any services you have subscribing to your twitter feed) and your friends who follow you can view it, if your twitters are public it then also enters the public timeline and is visible via Google (and other) searches and via other twitter search tools
In contrast if there are “Groups” on Twitter (and most of this argument is true of other social services) the mental model changes considerably, both for creators of content and for anyone looking to view that content.
Instead of the highly streamlined and simple model of Twitter today, it changes to:
1. Decide where to post your message which involves selecting amongst many different possible places, many of which likely could overlap (do you post a tweet about going to a debate viewing party this evening in SF in a global politics group, in a “dems in SF” group, in a “SF singles group”, in a group set up just for a group of your friends, etc.)
And do not say “just send the same message to many groups” - you still have to CHOOSE which group(s) to participate in with each engagement.
And further to CHOOSE between groups you first have to know that the groups exist. Either you have to have previously searched for the groups and joined them OR you have to engage in some form of discovery to find the groups.
2. Groups likely (most do) will have further policies which may/may not conflict with your personal policies. i.e. if you have “protected” your tweets (so only share them with people you know) but post to a group that is set public what should happen?
3. Once you post you then have to further decide what and where to monitor for reactions to your post - i.e. if you send the post to multiple groups you will likely generate replies within those groups - but anyone who is not monitoring each group will not see (probably) all of the replies (and see my point 2 if you suggest “just send all replies to all groups even if people aren’t already members of those groups”
And there is a quite related and also major issue from the side of following the discussions.
Say I am interested in politics, live in San Francisco, and am looking for somewhere to view the debate this evening. Do I search global (or US national) group(s) on politics? For the party of my choice? A geographically defined such group? (i.e. San Francisco Independents) or what? Almost certainly there will be dozens, perhaps hundreds, and for some topics (politics) probably 1000’s of potentially relevant groups. And in many cases people setting up the groups might define them in ways that differ from how I might be looking - yet in the end might, in fact, be of interest to me. (default example of this “Car lovers” vs “automobile aficionados” insert your own overlapping terms here….)
The problem with ALL groups across ALL social tools is that they require a LOT of effort and matching - people have to know about them and then DECIDE to post content to that particular group, and conversing other people have to DISCOVER that group, remember to check it for new content, and choose one group over another. Look at ANY groups collection (Facebook’s groups, Yahoo/Google groups etc) and without fail you will find 100’s to 1000’s of overlapping and quite similar groups. Most with only handfuls of members and next to no activity.
Private groups do have a place - but they ADD a higher amount of cognitive burden to use them than the far simpler tool of Twitter (today). I would HATE to see Twitter groups for this very reason.
Oh and further I would NOT define election.tiwtter.com as a group - it is a live display of a series of SEARCHES. (I think basically searching on Obama, McCain, Palin, and Baiden - perhaps on some variations and related political terms) I have to spend more time with it but I think every tweet shown has one of those terms inside of it. So a followup message on topic but without naming a candidate may not be shown…
Shannon
Holy shit! This post is so long that I thought I clicked through. Obnoxious.
Jaiku offers something similar to group concept : “Channels” .. u make annd ppl will start posting to that message
TWEET AND TO THE POINT {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/pT38B37pdQ_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”TWEET AND TO THE POINT ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/lq5GeGEwdn”}}}
You realllllly like to hear/see yourself talk……
It looks like you’re nude, lol.
marry me
“But what if you could create a group of like-minded individuals with interests much like your own on Twitter, regardless of whether or not they’re your friends?”
If you could do this, you’d have friendfeed. Oh wait, we already have friendfeed.
purely my 2 cents. I hate the groups idea. Friendfeed does it with rooms. It’s a them and us thing. Twitter is so good because total strangers can look me up, the hierarchy is totally flat. So in twitters case the lack of groups is a plus imo.
I totally agree with you! Friendfeed is just perfect ‘content central’ - a kind of a personal data base for interesting content, and Twitter is a perfect short communication tool. If I need anything I post a question and I always get a quality reply. Twitter forces me to to be short and concise in my message and not losing time as I am doing with emailing:)
I’d like to use a Twitter add-on called Britter that translates my English spelling into proper Queen’s English. Ja!
Facebook should buy twitter. seems only natural.
Twitter should have an emergency section that people would sign up for to be alerted immediately for things like the Virginia Tech shootings. It may prove to save a life in the long run…if instituted properly.
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Is is just me that wants to take Shira Lazar out for a drink?
Man, she’s cute!
What I suggest Twitter does is get into bio-technology. Why is that you ask? Twitter has created a framework to allow client machines (you and me twittering away on our phones) to communicate back to the server. Unfortunately the commericaility of it stops there. Twitter tries to commercialize by sending twitter responses your friends hoping they might be interested in the fact that you just farted whilst standing in a restuarant in Peuto Rico? pffft! What they need to do is create a bio-reader version of it that records your blood temperature, say every 3 seconds. Your heart rate. What your saying at any point in time, how your feeling etc, the environment in which your work. It takes all this bio-feedback and keeps that in its central database. Then they should release a search engine that not only crawls the web and stores all sorts of webby stuff in its databases but cross references the searches that you request using it to your bio-feedback data that they have in their databases and hey presto! your search results and amazingly better! Why is this? Well obviously because the search engine knows a lot more about you not only your age, hair color, weight, height etc but all those other things including the fact that you just ate a bag full of lollies and are probably going to be a pretty grumpy hyperactive bum bum in the next 2 minutes!
Come visit my website and say hello to me: http://www.requestfunds.com
Shannon, your comment is very interesting but I do not agree.
“The only - and fairly small - additional layer is to decide whether to invoke TWO primary additional features - starting your message with an @ or to send a private message using a d convention”
well, I don’t think that all users know about those additional “layers”.
“Decide where to post your message which involves selecting amongst many different possible places, many of which likely could overlap”
Sure groups are overlaping, but they are always a bit different. In order to reduce spams, I think it’s obligatory to limit to a unique group each tweet (maybe 3).
You keep that streamlined model + the possibility to share tweets with people you know, care about. Groups can be “on-request”, limited. That’s okay. Life is like that.
“you still have to CHOOSE which group(s) to participate in with each engagement.”
And is it so problematic to choose ? Yes, you have to join them before publishing a microblog inside. Is it a problem to have too many groups ? Well, that depends of the vision of the groups you have.
That’s what we tried to work on with HyperWeek.com, a groups platform where you can publish various formats, but also microblogs with a quick twitter crosspublish system.
Groups are micro-communities. They could still be seen as old-school. But they aren’t. They are the future.
So check this spammy group widget, with microblogs !
and the twitter problems just keep coming…