It’s not a bad joke, Twitter is apparently somehow involved in a new TV show. Among other things, this earns it our rarely used “WTF” in sign language image.
Twitter has not yet responded to an email, but investor Fred Wilson seems to think it’s a good idea, saying “TV isn’t TV anymore. It’s just the largest screen in the house.”
So we’ll wait for more details of the show to surface before we write the inevitable blog post trashing the idea (update: details!). In the meantime, Twitter, as a heavy user there are a nearly unlimited number of things I’d so much rather you guys spend your time on than going Hollywood. Here’s a few key ones, I’m guess lots more will show up in the comments and we’ll get to at least 300 or so things Twitter could better spend its time.
Keep The Lights On. Twitter is still not a stable service.
Fix Track. This is the “Google Alerts” feature of Twitter that made a brief appearance in 2007 but was stripped out in the uptime wars of 2008. It may have made sense to remove it at the time, but we’re long past due on this much needed feature.
Fix Search. Twitter’s main value is as a search engine, and it’s pretty broken. There’s lots of work to do here.
Stop Breaking Stuff. Twitter just doesn’t seem to feel comfortable in its own skin, making changes to suit the masses that are just confusing and need to be reversed.
Fix Private Messages. Twitter’s direct messages (private messages) has occasional hiccups. Sometimes they are mis-delivered, as in they go to the wrong person. That just can’t happen.
Maybe Launch Some Features. Twitter is so concerned with uptime that they rarely (never) launch new features. Sites like FriendFeed are embarrasing them with innovation, and others like Facebook are copying the core Twitter service. I get that uptime is important, but if you have time for meetings in Hollywood, you have time to add new features. Spend that time interviewing new engineers at the very least. You need more people badly.
Ok, that’s six. Let me know what you’d like to see Twitter do before working on a television show in the comments, and we’ll add the smartest and most entertaining to the main post.
Update: Some of the better suggestions from comments:
Groups/Friend List — @zee and @blackrabbit
Increased/No limit for API requests — Sam Houston and Jeff
“A business model.” — @robinwauters
Spam filtering — Sean Percival
Integration with Steam — @carltonprest
30-second edit window — @Sheamus
Analytics — @MiikoMentz
iTunes Genius-like recommendations engine — Wesley Barrow
Auto-linking of hashtags — @silvaldropout
Threaded conversations — jcunwired
Some of the suggestions were a bit more amusing:
“surrendering to FF” — Johnny Schroepfer
“Limit the amount of followers a cat can have to 499,999.” — @robinwauters
“Gonorrhea – something I’d like to see before a Twitter TV show.” — Dante
“A phone number where I can short the stock of the TV network that plans to air this show.” — swag
“I’d like to see Twitter allow people to order cheesecakes by tweeting @twittercakes, before I would like them be involved with a TV show.” — @chacha102
Groups.
Btter GUI..i like this layout but can be much better. Keeping it simple though
Twitter goes on TV is another idea. But what Twitter can do there? Let people communicate in real-time the way it goes on the Web? I doubt it would go anywhere.
On the contrary, sometimes I just wanna read through all the twitter feeds from my friends on the TV, after all digital set top boxes (one has a wigdet deal with yahoo) or the cable satellite set-tops, like ticker tape scrolls on the bottom of your screen…
…and if you see something that you want to respond to something you saw, that go back to it when you log into your computer later.
Simple really…
The ability to be logged into different accounts at once on different browsers. As if we don’t all have 4 or 5.
Intelligent RSS should be able to do that for us when reading streams form different accounts, but it might fall down when it comes to being able to respond, so back to the drawing boards.
fTags is the best way to do groups among other things. Looks like an elegant solution that solves a lot of twitter’s problems. http://ftags.com
ability to play media files that load inside of the actual tweet w/o having to go to another site.
…for that I’d say ask the guys that programmed yahoo messenger cos they might just have it sussed, for example copy a youtube link or media file into the box for your friend and there’s an option to watch it together inside the messenger window. Clever.
But if it’s a link to a website that kind of idea just goes out of the window.
Twibes.com doesn’t cut it for you (me either)
how about openmicroblogging and federation?
no character limit
You can’t just headline 300 things and list 20. “The rest will be in the comments”.
make friend lists a built in feature.
- a better web client (twitter.com)
- no limits on api requests
I would PAY for more API requests
Gimme a Twitter PRO account that is reasonably priced (I’d pay..$5-$10 a month) that gives me more API requests and Groups…I’d be pretty happy
NO JOKE, as a twitter app developer, I’d pay a serious premium for this as I can recoup it with profits when ideas succeed and scale to a level that requires more requests… $100+ / month even.
A business model. Yeah, that was a given
Speaking of “model”, how about an “American Idol” style “Twitter Model Contest” where aspiring models demonstrate their skills in sashaying down the runway and twittering at the same time.
On a serious note, there is a 1998 movie starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan called “You’ve Got Mail”, fashioned after the hot AOL email phenomenon at the time, and the movie was directed by, you guess it, Nora Ephron, the sister of Amy Ephron who is involved in the current Twitter Hollywood endeavor.
It has just dawned on me that there is remarkable resemblance between the phenomena of AOL Mail and Twitter, moreover, there is uncanny physical resemblance between Steve Case, the former head honcho of AOL, and Evan Williams, the founder of Twitter.
Has anyone seen both these guys in the same room?
Without this, the other 299 simply won’t matter.
I’m wondering when the “Death of Twitter” posts start…
how quickly are they burning through their capital, anyway?
I have been asking how soon we will see Twitter in the deadpool for a while. No profit = no company! No matter how fashionable it is…
Good thing my funds are not in their pool.
why care???
Twitter has a lot of cash to burn through.. Let them live. For me they are no longer interesting but why does a customer (who pays no money) care if the company has a good business model? Without a b.m. they will probably survive at least another 2 years as I am sure they would succeed at another investment round
Twitter is going to have a dump of noise, spam and junk. (sigh). This could be a great ass idea or the downfall of twitter.
Seems like marketing is a lot of more important than the actual product, which is fine. You need to have both marketing and innovation. Friendfeed has the innovation but zero marketing, which is one of the reason why no one knows Friendfeed.
FriendFeed… what’s that? is it a social network? (oops no, sorry that one’s called Friendster – any one heard of that? No didn’t think many of you would say yes to that one)
So if Twitter dies, it will only be the doom sayers and naysayers claiming a pyrrhic victory, because once it’s up and running and becomes essential, it will survive.
Marketing of a site/service like that? how ironic.
spam filtering
++
Replies. #fixreplies
No More Downtime [period]!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- integration with Steam, or really any game, for Multiplayer requests, achievements (kinda stupid but whatever)
- integration with OS (windows/mac/*nix), for bug reports, alerts, whatever.
bottom line: Twitter doesn’t need a TV show.
How about: Anything BUT a TV show?
Actually explain clearly what it does to mainstream users.
It’s had the same homepage for ages, even though the founders themselves admitted its involved into something they never expected – why don’t they share with us what Twitter has grown into, and what they’re trying to do with it.
It’s not about “what are you doing” anymore…
*evolved
Actually, you’re probably close with your first word.
Maybe the show will be the way to expose the mainstream to Twitter at greater depth/detail, esp. focusing on the social elements via conflict and resolution among characters via Twitter.
“It’s not about “what are you doing” anymore…”
Yes it is.
Off the top of my head:
* Filters, both temporary and permanent (i.e., block all blip.fm tweets, or whatever)
* TweetDeck-like groups
* A re-tweet button on the home page
* Re-tweets are logged and counted, with stats made available internally
* A 30-second ‘edit window’ for tweets
* A way to link tweets
* A way to mass-delete or mark/delete, and search/filter direct messages
* A once-a-day email digest option for all followers (and unfollowers)
* One-click access to threaded tweets for conversations
* A way to see all the users you have blocked
* A proper suggested users list, that is relevant to me
* A way to just see the trending topics in my network, by demographic, subject, region etc
* Favourites are logged and the most favoured tweets are ranked
I could probably do the 300 myself, to be honest.
nice Sheamus
Almost sounds like the twitter client I was going to make, guess my ideas leaked!!
Great list, Seamus.
Twitter should be listening to people like you who are thinking about that little thing called the “core service” instead of trying to cash in the brand name for the first crappy TV show idea that comes knocking at their door.
Please sign my petition if you agree:
http://bit.ly/notwittershow
Thanks!
@Mike: Great post, BTW.
free SMS to my country
What he said!
I think they figured out they’d make easier money on tv then the web.
Now that they have people, how do you make money – TV? I agree with earlier comment.
Ditto on @Sheamus’ suggestions. In addition, some analytics and stealth blocking features would be nice.
yeah, when you put it like this Michael, Twitter is really becoming quite lame. They’re only doing this TV show thing for the money, pretty obvious.
Ditto to search archive being *fully* searchable. Plus, access to my entire two year archive. Also, agree the front-end explanation re: Twitter needs to change. New Twitter members still so confused how to use Twitter.
1) Re-enable “Track” [1]
2) Complete a series of screencasts as video vignettes on YouTube that explain in easy to see scenarios the use cases for every single feature of the service — we’re all beyond screenshots at this point. Use the available technology and press education and inform the emerging base. Get people hooked on how to explore things.
3) Let subscribers delineate what mobile carrier they are presently using when adding a mobile device and use that information to craft another valuable user metric for those that use TXT/SMS and to display how many messages have been sent/recd in this manner.
4) Publish the top 10 “issues” from GetSatisfaction in a easily visible location within the company support and blog areas so that everyone can see what is happening or not happening with user demands/complaints
5) Re-enable “Track” [1]
[1] http://blog.twi...ng-twitter.html
track track track track track. TRACK.
its the hottest track on itunes right now
“the gilmore shuffle”
Just found this Gillmor gem
http://www.yout...h?v=KsJULswzYNg
Awesome.
get rid of the abolished cats!
Stop the one-month user bleeding.
A recommendations engine (a hybrid between iTunes Genius and Mr. Tweet)
Limit the amount of followers a cat can have to 499,999 – http://www.tech...rs-in-3-months/
what about dogs?
nudge. oh wait – they already have that. what is that feature anyway?!!?
mike – first of all, i didn’t say that line. i reblogged it from chartreuse who posted it as a comment on my blog post from last week
http://fredwils...-largest-screen
second of all, i was not thinking of twitter in the least when i posted that. it’s about the new tv, ie the ability to get video over the net onto your big screen, middle screen, or small screen
and finally, why does everyone assume twitter is involved in this tv show? has twitter said anything about it? was twitter quoted in the press release? you and a lot of other people are jumping to conclusions. slow down, relax, and wait for twitter to say something and i think you’ll see that this (just like my tumblr post) is not what it seems
Fred – I think everyone was looking forward to the work this would bring Carmen Electra. It’s been over 10 years now and the time might be right [1].
[1] http://en.wikip...ki/Hyperion_Bay
Don’t know.
The key question for me is: Why do we want all of these features implemented on an “infrastructure” level. If we consider Twitter being merely a big message pipe, sort of a Carrier 2.1, we should focus on keeping the Twitter network as dumb as possible.
Otherwise we are going to face a tough vendor lock-in. API limits already are Twitter’s way of staying in charge.
I’d say we should start thinking to enhance the Twitter universe with outside services, keeping Twitter’s role down to the *delivery* of messages.
yeah don’t get me started on the limits on data usage that prohibit really cool third party apps.
1. Email digest. No need for so many emails.
2. Filtering
3. Give us access to the analytics – you’re already loading the google script on every user page.
4. Discount character limits for usernames (e.g. dont count them) and links.
5. Let us do some basic HTML on our homepage (links, hotspots, etc – but limit it to a region, force us to use of wisely.
6. Be more transparent. The people who are developing for your platform don’t want to guess at which services you’ll make obsolete by in-housing it.
You can leave everything else to your 3rd party developers. We’ll take good care of your baby.
Groups, ’nuff said.
# should be automatically tag and available as a hyperlink to the search . i hate using # then having to copy and paste it just to search. it should be built it.
C’mon, who said Twitter’s monetization had to actually come from the service?
Damn right Twitter! Use your brand’s moment of hotness and diversify into other forms of products!
TV show, that’s right go for it.
“Twittle” (Snapple clone) yes people will buy and drink it.
Tweet Cakes, sure, the kids will love em.
I like the idea of Twitter making money from other ventures using the Twitter brand!
Yes, grouping people I follow – it doesn’t get more obvious then that in terms of adding value.
Build an interactive SDK, making it even easier for web developers to “clip” code from the SDK into their web applications/sites for more integration.
bit.ly window on the front page – tired of long URLS taking all my space without room to comment – and then having plenty of room after the ‘change’.
a split screen of those I follow, and those I don’t – without having to track thru a million pages.
drop the dumb idea of stalking celebs – they get enough of that already by idiots – last they they need is for the service they helped ‘make’, turn on them for the sake of ‘entertainment’.
Well it would surely be nice to see twitter try to monetize the site somehow outside the box. I thought about putting out reviews for http://www.worstpizza.com, in well produced formats for tv, but never went through with it
They should invest more in service & support.
People get frustrated with inadequate & impersonal FAQ responses & just leave (60% within a month?). Talk to your users. Be more transparent (which I find ironic to advise to the poster-child of the Web2.0 world). Don’t just talk to reporters & celebrities. It’s getting to a point of saturation and you don’t want to be the “last big thing”.
Do some self-analysis and find out what users want & need. Twitter employees are not heavy users of Twitter (comparatively speaking) and you shouldn’t rely on a network of associates to determine the needs of your different user groups.
Of course, service & support are not revenue generating. But less alienation of your users (old & new) would lead to less attrition and more users who stay around. And isn’t long-term & consistent growth in a userbase part of your plan?
P.S. You should have a weekly rotation of new & fresh names on people on the Suggested Users list (say 20/week). It’s over 200 people at this point & getting stale. Have some basis for picking people since it has such a powerful impact.
Address book, por favor.
Plain text emails? Oh wait, they had that and then went with the stupid a$$ HTML emails.
That’s funny because earlier today I was thinking to myself “what do twitter employees do all day?” I mean, they haven’t done shit on Twitter in months. Oh sorry, they integrated the search box and trending topics on the homepage. Great! I think Twitter is just a bunch of dudes that have no clue what they’re doing or where they’re going. Isn’t it time to put someone with balls in command of Twitter? Maybe that’s one thing Twitter should do: hire a new CEO
I’d like to see most retweeted tweets relating to what I’m watching as I watch a sporting event, music video, or documentary.
adds another dimension to the tv experience, and this would make me more focused on the tv rather than triple-screening it.
still waiting for the all-powerful twitter search engine. in the meantime, filtered search that removes spam feeds and retweets would be a welcomed update.
- Search for people by location
- Search for people by keyword in their description
- While we’re at it, how about a “real” profile?
Come to think of it, Twitter would do well just copying the features already in Identi.ca.
Gonorrhea – something I’d like to see before a Twitter TV show.
Twitter is one of the greatest plot devices ever! It has created more serendipitous moments in my life than I can shake a stick at. I’m not even remotely surprised that someone with some media savvy saw the opportunity to build a show around the service. Frankly, it’s a no brainer.
I can’t help but ponder: why is the assumption here that this potential deal can only be a distraction to Twitter? I’m not sure I agree that’s the case.
Here’s why: As an outsider with zero details other than what I read online this morning I can only assume the show would be driven primarily by showrunners (ie the usual writer/producer types who are in the business of creating TV shows.) That sounds like a good match and not particularly distracting to a startup.
Just to throw a few more things out there:
Wouldn’t this potentially attract more mainstream users to the service? And, while doing so, attempt to explain the value proposition to millions of new users? These seem like great opportunities for a startup to position itself into peoples lives in ways that are significantly more relevant to them than reading about the service on a tech blog, hearing references to it on the Daily Show, or stumbling on something about the service in their favorite periodical.
Twitter is expanding like crazy right now and like any healthy garden it will continue to blossom (and some things might die too). You just might have to wait a season or two for something to come back again. Those of us who were early adopters were just beta testers playing with their sandbox. Clearly, the company is hiring aggressively and the features that are likely to be on deck next are going to be targeted to a more diverse audience than they’ve been serving. Patience grasshopper, what you’re witnessing is more of the “usual growing pains” not a distracted company who is off its game and “jumping the shark”. You might not like it but this is a HUGE opportunity for the service.
Let me tell you the story of this thing called the 1990s, a land where fat executives thought that television programs would direct a firehose of success at any Web site of their choosing.
The story does not end well.
“It has created more serendipitous moments in my life than I can shake a stick at.”
You need to get out more buddy… Or get a bigger stick.
From FriendFeed: http://friendfe...itter-should-be
Ken Morley and phil baumann liked this
spammers – jcunwired
Search that works – David Damore aka: @Admore
A site that doesn’t crash every other day – Johnny Schroepfer
Removing spammers from my search results if I’ve blocked them already. – David Damore aka: @Admore
surrendering to FF – Johnny Schroepfer
user interface for better management of friends, groups, tweet archives – Brad_King
Threaded conversations – jcunwired
doubling allowable post character length….they could televise it. – Thom Kennon
i think the idea of a TV show is a brilliant one.. Mark Zuckerberg must be slapping himself that he didn’t think of it first! – Jason Pollock
Is this TV show something that shows up while the service is down? If yes, then it’ll rival YouTube shortly.
(The first show: animated fail whales that bump into each other…)
A phone number where I can short the stock of the TV network that plans to air this show.
Given that Reveille is set to produce the show, and the former founder and owner of Reveille is Co-Chairman of Entertainment at NBC… Well, you do the math. Ben Silverman has a history of innovation in cross-platform media. He has also used his “cross-platform savvy” to keep his job — citing it as one of the reasons he’s better than the other heads of entertainment around Town. A Twitter show, while gimmicky, sounds like him.
It is starting to become a common topic on where you are headed with the momentum you carry…Take the bull by the horns and set some ground rules/protection for users. Put a cap on the Whales, the frenzy to acquire followers on a large scale is causing a lot of abuse for people with good intentions. Rereading the same content over and over by certain virtual egos etc….. Maybe monitor/approve third party apps… the baby is out growing the nest..needs nurturing.
I’d love some support for embedded stuff. The thid party app and scripting communities are killing Twitter’s crew as far as that stuff goes. If a link goes to a YouTube video, how about an embedded video or a pop-up? If it goes to a podcast, maybe an MP3 player widget or, again, a pop-up.
Sigh. *Third-party.
You only listed 6 but for #7 you say that they need to get rid of spammers/fake accounts/marketers quicker then they do. In comparison to FriendFeed they pretty much FAIL and getting rid of them.
I’d like to see Twitter allow people to order cheesecakes by tweeting @twittercakes, before I would like them be involved with a TV show.
twitter now has expanded its reach, good for them.
I’d like to see twitter integrate some sort of feature where tweets scroll past my screen in real time (with an obvious 12 second delay to blur profanity before it shows up). I don’t want any input to the service. I just want to watch the tweets scroll by.
If they did this I would immediately move my monitor into my my living room and plop on the couch to watch twitter for hours…
… just PLEASE don’t make a TV show!
BONUS: AdSense based on the scrolling tweets (but only cost per impression. no clicking)… Immediate business model!