Things Twitter Should Do Better

2016-01-14

Just some notes...

Twitter is going downhill (in my opinion). Since Jack Dorsey became CEO (again), there have been some... interesting additions. The number one, most useless thing they wasted their time on is Twitter Moments. Moments is basically a summary of media the people who follow have tweeted. I'd like to see some stats on how many people use it, and how many of those people clicked it either by accident or out of idle curiosity. I don't think it's something Twitter should have spent time developing -- perhaps their time would have been better spent improving their existing things, like making the Twitter mobile app more consistent or streamlining Twitter for Web -- or hell, even making TweetDeck nicer to use.

The official Twitter app for Android (not sure about iOS) is a mess. The most prominent issue I have is the fact that the top navigation bar will change what icons it has where, either when I switch between accounts or just restart the app. Their bottom nav is terrible too -- it will cycle between a clunky floating action button, a bar with a faux-text input and camera icon, and a three-section bar consisting of a new tweet, camera, and gallery icons. What is this? Why on Earth do we need three different nav styles -- that it cycles between?! I want to know both how and why this decision was made, if it can count as a decision.

I think the worst part of this whole Twitter app debacle is that they have people at Twitter who know how to do Twitter apps. The creator of Falcon Pro works at Twitter, and I consider his app an absolutely amazing Twitter experience. So how why is the experience so terrible? And why are they focusing on new things like an edit button (rumored), 10,000 character tweets (again, rumored), and bloody Twitter Moments.

So, Mr. Jack Dorsey, how could you make Twitter decent again?

First, take a step back. Remember what you envisioned Twitter being. No, not a text-only messaging system, that's a terrible idea, and remember how much debt Twitter was in after that. No, rather, take a step back and simplify. Cut out the 'features' you think are fantastic. Make it a 140-character microblogging platform. Cut out anything that you can see any reason to have. Open up your API more and let devs work on what they want to. Why? Because people want and have freedom of choice. If they don't want to use the official Twitter app, fine. Let them use an unofficial one, an unofficial one that has actual access to something resembling an API, not extremely basic functions. And fix your own official apps, so people are actually tempted to use them. Keep the 140-character limit, because it's a gimmick that worked. Return Likes to Favorites, because you're not Facebook, as much as you want to work there. Maybe fix up Tweetdeck so it's a little nicer to use, modernize the UI and make it flow. Promote the Falcon Pro author to a position where he can make some UI/UX suggestions and actually get heard.

And above all, please don't kill the blue bird.