Twitter’s Redesign and “The Mark”

July 31, 2009

An interesting review of Twitter’s new site design – from the perspective of a content provider of “tweets”:
http://ritubpant.com/why-twitters-new-design-totally-misses-the-mark/

His points are valid, that in Twitter’s new design the core function of social network is overshadowed by the emerging core function of search (clearly dependent on the successful social network use and content provision). But what is “The Mark” that Twitter want’s to hit and what is “The Mark” Mr. Ritu want’s them to hit?

My response is that Twitter is clearly a classic 80/20 Rule (or quite possibly a 98/2 Rule) where all of Twitter’s content is provided by less than 10% of the users. Twitter needed to build up the network and the site initially was a content collector.

Currently most users who add content, Tweet Creators, to Twitter are using web and mobile apps like Tweetie, TweetDeck, et. al. So they are not really ever seeing or using the Twitter interface.

Moving the interface design more towards the emerging core of Search opens up Twitter to a more popular use by the other 80-90% of users, Tweet Searchers. Here is where Twitter needs to grow, needs to provide value, and needs to discover it’s ultimate ROI. It’s the new Twitter that will use our public posts to provide real-time information to the other 80% of the users consuming the Tweets we make.

I think they are hitting “The Mark” they need to hit, but how does the 20% social app, content creators feel about the expanded use of “their experience”, or more so, the diverted attention they are getting?

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4 Comments

  1. tstiles says:
    August 17, 2009 at 11:41 am

    Came across this older post by Nielsen group about the 90/9/1 rule.

    Feels most appropriate with the Twitter factor: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html

  2. Mike says:
    September 21, 2009 at 1:23 pm

    Interesting issues… from the useit link you posted… I wonder if Twitter has anything like this on the drawing board: “Promote quality contributors. If you display all contributions equally, then people who post only when they have something important to say will be drowned out by the torrent of material from the hyperactive 1%. Instead, give extra prominence to good contributions and to contributions from people who’ve proven their value, as indicated by their reputation ranking.”

  3. Mike says:
    September 21, 2009 at 1:31 pm

    Or is will it always be a “level playing field”? I just wonder if it might be nice to have a rating system for posts and posters… or at least some way to clean off the spam a bit.

  4. tstiles says:
    September 21, 2009 at 1:41 pm

    Right, social capital, the Whuffie, is on it’s way…

    Yeah, adding levels of value to the Twitter Friends brings in the social capital. TweetDeck-like sorting of Friends into streams/groups helps.

    I have a pretty limited Private Twitter Stream otherwise would be completely overwhelmed by all the tweets coming in, I’m not sure how others manage that…

    Optional links per post:
    “Do you trust this person?”
    “Was this tweet helpful or valuable?”
    “Do you want to see more tweets from this person?”
    “Block this person.”
    “Rate this post.”
    “Rate this person.”
    …
    “Is anything this person says of value to you? At all?”

    The social capital stuff starts to get really personal down the line…