Twitter's Next Moves: My Assessment

#257: Twitter's Unrealized Potential
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I regularly read Casey Newton's newsletter (it's free!) covering digital news.  Several weeks ago I saved a particularly interesting opinion for later.  Here it is, with my commentary, in green.

"...At Twitter, good ideas languish for years. The expansion of a tweet from 140 to 280 characters required such bruising internal battles that the designer responsible quit in exhaustion after shipping it, I’m told...."

There was significant blowback from users, so I can imagine how difficult that decision was.  Good, though, as it turned out, as we've all gotten used to it now, and routinely run over 140. 

"At Twitter, no idea has languished for quite as long as a feature that would let users follow areas of interest in addition to regular accounts. One reason people have historically abandoned Twitter is the difficulty in figuring out which accounts to follow.

I would describe the problem in a slightly different way.   I recently checked out the Topics feature, and felt my options were almost all crass, pop culture hype, and sports.  And yet I'm sure there are excellent, opinionated writers who I'd enjoy reading and/or viewing, if I knew who they were.

"A “topics” feature, if it were properly implemented, could take the guesswork out of building a list of such accounts. Instead of finding the best accounts that cover the NBA, for example, you could just follow “NBA” and let Twitter do the work.
It’s an idea that dates back to the company’s earliest days, and has long been in development. (“They were definitely working on this idea when I was there in 2016,” one exasperated ex-Twitter employee tweeted at me today.)"

Except, this look-it-up functionality wouldn't highlight the quality account I might want to follow, so much as--it would seem--follow commercial logic.  The dull writers on a subject I'm interested in won't make my cut.  Meanwhile, an excellent writer on a subject I know nothing about would turn me into an interested party.

"Recently, Twitter invited me to its headquarters to let me know that the feature is now ready to launch, and will be available globally on November 13th. I wrote about it today at The Verge:
You will be able to follow more than 300 “topics” across sports, entertainment, and gaming, just as you are currently able to follow individual accounts. In return, you’ll see tweets from accounts that you don’t follow that have credibility on these subjects."

"That have credibility on these subjects" is the key phrase.  Is this popularity based on critical acclaim, or will it be more of a pop cultural nod to the broad and the loose.

"Twitter executives hope that Topics will make the platform more approachable for new and intermittent users and make it easier for heavier users to discover new accounts and conversations."

OK, I'll check it out. 

"...Generally speaking, the more heavily you use Twitter, the less valuable you may find Topics — power users tend to be really good at curating a perfect list of accounts to follow. But for new, casual, and lapsed users, I expect Topics to be a powerful tool for Twitter that could help the company grow its user base."

Hard to disagree, then. 

"It’s the latest overdue but welcome feature that Twitter has shipped in recent months. Under the leadership of head of product Kayvon Beykpour, the company began removing abusive tweets faster; shipped a native app for MacOS; added a search feature to direct messages; turned its lists into swipeable timelines; and began letting you hide replies to your tweets. And that’s just what the company has shipped since September.
It appears that much more is on the horizon."

Sounds good. 

"[Recently], Dantley Davis, Twitter’s vice president for design and research, raised eyebrows with a tweet in which he said he is “looking forward to” the launch of several new features next year. They include: letting users remove themselves from conversations; preventing their tweets from being retweeted if they choose; preventing people from mentioning their user names without permission; and sending tweets only to a specific hashtag, interest, or group of friends."

More goodness, it would seem.  Hopefully these changes will reduce the attack dog atmosphere that some have complained about. 

"In a follow-up tweet, Davis also suggested the company would begin labeling multi-tweet threads automatically."

Another winner. 

"On one hand, this is classic Twitter: lots of talk ahead of actions that could be months, if not more than a year, away. But thanks to the company’s recent track record, I’m much more inclined to believe it will follow through on that talk. For the first time in many years, the company is backing up its talk with action. Here’s hoping that it’s one Twitter trend that is here to stay."

From my perspective, all would be well if Twitter enabled a system for ranking writers (aside from 'likes'), perhaps within specific topics; this, to enable the best to rise up and be followed.  

I've written about civility on Twitter here.  And, about ranking, here.  A simple ranking would allow followers to note the accounts they enjoy the most.  This would mean I could surf from one recommendation to the next, until I found someone to follow, someone who I didn't even know I was looking for.