Twitter has just rolled out a small, but somewhat meaningful update to the way it sends email notifications. This includes both direct message notifications and new follower notifications. Both now carry the Twitter logo and turquoise background in each update, rather than just plain text. But more importantly, the new notifications contain a lot more information about the person sending you the message or following you.
For example, previously when someone followed you, you received a message like:
Hi, MG Siegler (parislemon).
XXXXX XXXX (xxxxx) is now following your updates on Twitter.
Check out XXXXX XXXX’s profile here:
http://twitter.com/XXXXXYou may follow XXXXX XXXXXX as well by clicking on the “follow” button.
Best,
The only thing that was a hyperlink in all of that was the actual profile URL. Now, when a new person subscribes to you, you see what is in the image below.
As you can see, this now gives you how many followers they have, how many people they are following, and how many tweets they’ve sent. You can also see their profile picture. Previously, you would had to click through to a person’s profile on Twitter to see all of that. This certainly will save me a lot of time in checking out the people who follow me. And it actually should help me follow more people that I want to, as it’s not such a hassle to screen through new users now.
Direct messages aren’t that much different substance-wise, but they do also contain the Twitter logo now, as well as the Twitter user’s icon (pictured, below).
Update: As commenter Jeff notes below, these notifications would be even more useful if Twitter had added the “Bio” data that users include in their profiles.
[Thanks Adam]
Interesting, pretty much redundant now though, with all the apps that are being used. Who even uses email anymore?
Their API doesn’t let you manage follow requests, so you can’t do that via third party apps.
You can manage followers and following via my app: http://tweepleTwak.com
Does that use the official API though?
There’s also the obvious point that they could use the emails to push out advertisements.
According to a Radicati Group study from August 2008, there are about 1.3 billion email users worldwide. That makes a tad more than one in every five persons on the earth use email.
The follower update looks better. The DM email update sucks. Truly. You can no longer preview the actual message from an inbox view (at least in Gmail) anymore because they have added the worthless prepend “Hi, Jason Keath. You have a new direct message”.
The subject line of “DM from XXXX” should do just fine. I say they made the DM emails much worse.
agreed.
Topify has better notifications for twitter. Available at http://www.topify.com
For some reason my Trackback does not take here. Here is my official reaction on the announcement from Twitter: YES!!
http://ouriel.t...-direction.html
Ha, I just noticed that too. I guess they pushed a few changes through today.
Thanks MG. I’m always breaking Twitter news but it’s probably because I’m constantly using it.
I’m the scoble of Twitter. Not sure if that’s a good thing……
Looks sharp.
Brilliant. In the senses that Twitter is finally starting to embrace user want/need in incorporating this type of functionality.
Downfall is they’ve just eliminated some 3rd party apps that provided this type of functionality.
Like
http://twitapps.com/follows/
or
https://nutshel...er/Default.aspx ?
Solid improvements; it’s good to know who people are, based on their stats, before making a decision on re-following, blocking, etc.
Thanks MG, I’m glad they added the turquoise background to their emails. Please let us know if they ever change its hue or saturation. By the way, do you know what @ev had for breakfast this morning? I think it’s important to keep the tech community informed about Twitter.
In preparing for The View, I would imagine he had a nice yogurt dish. But I can try to confirm that for you.
Gah! Why didn’t they include the “about” section? That’s 10x more useful than the amount of followers.
Great point, I’m gonna add that in as well.
That or the last couple updates would be really nice. Half of the people that follow me are spammers and I never know until I click through to see.
That would be nice too.
I agree that bio and previous tweet info would be nice, but it’s also a dirty way for spammers to fill your inbox with messages email filters are trying so desperately to junk. Even if you only see it once, they’ve won that day’s microbattle for your time. To compensate, I’d like a block button right in the email.
I’m guessing that they want you to visit the site at that point to see the bio. Obviously they must have discussed putting the bio directly in the email and had a reason for not doing so.
Another nice touch would have been last 5 Tweets.
I’m sure spammers would love it if they could include their link straight in the notification email. That way even if their account is shut down already, then at least the notification email already has a tempting link in it.
All these – bio, last tweets and even website will be good additions. Date of joining twitter will also be good.
Spamming is a possible issue. So there could even be a ‘report spammer’ link
Topify give much more information via email ! Maybe Twitter should buy them…
Buy a service that sends emails… yeah right !
I can’t see Twitter buy any of its 3rd party apps, unless it is a very popular application, in some sense dangerous to its core product, and having a unique and interesting technology not easily replicated, ie Summize.
Except for PR consequences, and failing to keep the site as minimal as possible, Twitter could plausibly copy and include any ideas based on 3rd party apps, and possibly block the source application Microsoft style. It makes sense for Twitter to push its boundary as much and as cheaply as possible without aggravating anyone too much.
If it had a free and open philosophy, it would be more liberal with who can receive the data firehose such as FriendFeed.
Can we also please get a TC post every time Evan Williams farts?
We’re working on something like that kind of like the plant needs water Twitter alert thingy.
Build an application that tracks the food that you eat and the likelihood of you farting and at what time. It’s better to know in advance! futter, or something.
Brilliant.
Please be sure to also include his liquid and solid production. We fans don’t want to miss anything he outputs to the universe, regardless of its phase.
yes please, and make sure you include the fart in the post … this twitter thing is getting so exciting!!!!
Check this YouTube video if you are interested in Evan Williams farts:
http://www.yout...h?v=9erlZnMekZ0
He farts in the end.
In a night when Chelsea got punished for their anti-football a week ago, I’m so happy that I even don’t care about that yet another Twitter post.
Oh God, what an evening, search Chelsea Barcelona on Twitter and witness how Europe is going crazy right now.
What’d be even more useful is some kind of ‘commonality’: number of common followers, number of common friends (and of course, bios) but it’s a neat start.
That would be really nice Nik — though that would require borrowing something from Facebook — does the bridge run both ways?
It sure should. Facebook’s swiped enough Twitter ideas in recent months
This services does that.
http://www.twittfilter.com/
Wow, Twitter switches from text emails to html emails and makes Techcrunch. Either it must really be a slow news day or Techcrunch loves twitter a little *too* much.
My problem is I only read BIO sections to decide whether someone is worthy of a follow-back… they should upgrade the new emails to include their BIOS!
Maybe I’ll stop using Twimailer from now on.
have you guys seen twimailer? even better and has a different color blue! http://twimailer.com/
was going to say the same – twimailer rocks.
Also shows you the last few messages they posted, which is an even better measure of their spamtastic score.
Definitely a change for the better. Makes life a lot easier. Many thanks!
A normailzed measure of frequency of Tweets would be VERY useful. such as #Tweets last 30 days
Total # Tweets is not very useful, because some people have been on Twitter far longer than others.
Work in progress and great visual changes. I’m sure that in the future, these notifications might include the bio info we put in. This might even be an option for the person doing the following (ie, “What information would you like to share for notifications sent to people you follow?”). On the flip, this could be an easy way for people to spam directly to your email box… which isn’t so cool.
we wanted to do this for them just last week –
http://bit.ly/TvbPn
I am quite proud to see Twitter taking the direction we initiated with Topify.com. This move will help us in our direction since our notifications are richer (for example include MrTweet stats, last tweets, bio and more), but are also actionable (you can follow back, block answer DM ) right from your email.
if you want to try it check on just get your invite on http://bit.ly/topifyinvite (we re still private)
Yeah, always room for more information in these notifications Ouriel.
Well it is not about information or design. It is about user experience and that s why we created Topify> to make notifications smarter and save time to users (btw we save about 1/4 of year in a few weeks of usage only being still in private beta)
What’s the bigger vision for Topify Ouriel? I’m sure its not trying to compete with Twitter over the email-notification-of-follows-and-dms feature since that’s sort of a lost battle isn’t it? They will catch up eventually.
Do you seriously expect me to disclose all our plans here? i am surprise by your remark. A battle is never ever lost unless you quit it.
I can’t understand why you would include Mr Tweet stats. Have they paid you? For a start, it doesn’t have records for all Twitter users, only Mr Tweet users and is slow.
I heard Jason Goldman @goldman last week at Stanford talk about the way things look and they are named are important to twitter. It’s good to see them take a step forward.
I’d like to see them add 5 people that the user shares tweets with so you can see their social circle too.
If the user base would accept it, it’s also a tremendous opportunity to inject ads to generate revenue. They don’t have to be as intrusive as we suggested here, http://bit.ly/TvbPn but it might just work out well for twitter. Any thoughts?
Ok this really is getting beyond a joke now; Techcrunch is really just becoming a glorified Twitter Blog. im SICK of hearing about another “fantastic” feature they have implemented, it seems techcrunch is beginning to loose perspective where this site is concerned. SPEAKING AS A TIME-SERVED SOFTWARE ENGINEER I CAN HONESTLY TELL YOU THAT TWITTER AND THE SO CALLED “TECHNOLOGY” BEHIND IT IS REALLY VERY BASIC; ITS REALLY NOTHING THAT A FRESHMAN COMPUTER SCIENCE STUDENT COULDN’T KNOCK TOGETHER IN A FEW DAYS OR LESS. There are companies out there (such as my own) that are working extremely hard in these challenging times to solve REAL computational problems that will ultimately lead to vast social and economical benefits the world over. There are companies working in fields such as AI, Computer Vision and Quantum Computing. These companies however, never seem to get a mention. Critically, I think if techcrunch are receiving “incentives” to talk about Twitter then they should come right out and say it, instead of deceiving their readers into thinking that Twitter is some kind of miraculous technology – its clearly not!!.
I want to make clear that this is just my 2 cents, i mean no offence to anyone.
Technology doesn’t have to be miraculous. The simplest ideas and implementations are often the best. Twitter isn’t newsworthy or fascinating because of it’s technology, it’s because of the people that are using it day in and day out. Twitter is just the medium that lets people do amazing (and, I admit, some not so amazing) things.
you are totally right, and kudos for your hard work.
reality is that talking about twitter is as easy as talking of yesterday’s Chelsea-Barcelona match. Anyone can read it and think he’s witty because he gets that.
reality is that this blog is a pity to read.
all the best
This is indeed a bit interesting – but why would I spend time following up on someone who follows me?
Is twitter share really that important to my bottom line?
How about adding a spammer flag button. Let community assist with catching spam accounts and in turn making Twitter a better service. Killing the spam before it can even get popular on Twitter (is a little now, but will get MySpace worse soon).
Code would be following 1,000 vs. follower count 2 that would be spam in users eyes and Twitters eyes too.
If you want a notification about Followers/Unfollowers with Bio, latest Tweets and a Follow Now button, try out http://rssfriends.com/ .
I
Why can’t this be sent thru as plain text, not everyone wants html emails..
Would solve the problems people seem to be getting bounced email from Twimailer in recent weeks though.
More important than anything it says “You can send me a direct message on your phone or on IM D ADAM JACKSON” – does this mean that IM is coming back soon?
Great additions, especially if they successfully fall back to text-based for e-mail clients that are still text-only (like my mobile phone).
I currently use Topify for processing follows and DMs because of the fact that Twitter has been so poor in terms of the information provided. Now, if they can add the wishlist items I have for Topify:
http://johnfmoo...r-using-topify/
then you’ll soon see me move away from Topify and back to just core Twitter functionality.
John Moore
http://twitter.com/JohnFMoore
That’s intresting I had to check this when some one follow me.
That nice and better
sure would like to find someone to work with who knew how to code using the twitter API… just sayin’ is all.
R.I.P. topify
i don’t think so. we’re hitting a record in mentions (positive one) today http://search.t...=topify+twitter
This could be interesting. I’d have to be a part of it for a while before I have some solid feedback for this. Well, looks like I have to sign up for it and get back to you in a week!
This is much better although I would also like to see visible the followers that we share displayed
Why would you write an article about this! This is the farthest thing from news. The majority of the population doesn’t use Twitter, yet you continue to mention them in every article even though 40% of their new users continue to leave the service. I am getting close to just visiting venturebeat.com from now on. This is getting rediculous!
twitter is the next second life
I just recently started to use topify.com. It’s a great service.
Bravo Twitter!! Bravo!! Good stuff.
I’ve been using Twimailer for this (happily other than a brief interruption) for a while; it’s basically the same implementation.
A trivial tweak that would be incredibly useful would be to replace the “follow back” link with “you already follow ___” in cases where you do. A significant percentage of follow notices are from people I’ve followed for whatever reason, and if they’re new to my stream or infrequent updaters, I don’t always remember whom I’ve followed.
… And I thought that it was a phish.
Just noticed they’ve added clickthrough tracking to the notifications, too. Look at the URL when you land on a person’s page, and you’ll see things like:
utm_source=follow
utm_campaign=twitter
utm_mediim=email
These are for Google Analytics, so they’re using Google ironically to measure how well the follows are going.
I like TwitReport for notification, which was developed by prolific Twitter geek @tj. It provides all the information that earlier commenters have been asking for: stats, relationship reports of mutual follows/followers, plus direct links for blocking and spam reports.
http://tntluoma...pts/twitreport/
I would also like to the see the person’s last tweet at the time when he/she added me.
The notifications are better, but I agree with posts above. They still could include more data about the person following.
I also want to know which of my twitter accounts they are following, which they’ve removed from the new email.
http://www.less...emails-are.html
unsubscribe me please. thank you