Making Twitter Sticky
There are a lot of changes happening over at Twitter at the minute. They recently updated their Terms of Service and now they’re working on Project ReTweet, where sharing someone else’s tweet with your connections will be performed differently from the current user-generated method.
As is usual when wide-scale changes happen at a company (or, in this case, on a digital stream), there are both fans and dissenters to the new proposals. That’s normal. But what if Twitter could bypass the need for changes like the retweet one?
Twitter’s reasoning for the change is that it can be a confusing mess for new users, and it’s one of the reasons a lot of new users give up within the first month.
While that’s true, a lot of that comes down to the fact that Twitter itself doesn’t offer a great user guide for newcomers. A really simple FAQ or intro sheet emailed to new users would make all the difference, and then they could advise of user-created options, how they fit in and how best to use them.
This would help settle in new users and create something similar to the WordPress community, where you’d have the official tools as well as the community-created ones that existing users can help with. It’d help people settle in more quickly and get the sticky factor that Twitter needs (if reports that 40% of all new users quit after one month is accurate).
But why stop there? There are other areas that Twitter could help keep new and existing users stay happy.
Kill the Private Spam
This is a major problem for Twitter. We know there’s a chance our public streams will have some spam content. But I don’t recall signing up for private message spam from third-party platforms that I didn’t even register for. Pirate games and mafia clans are just two current examples. How can they get into my private message area when I’m not a user? Not good, Twitter.
Make the Suggested Users List Relevant
When you sign up for a new account, Twitter gives you a list of suggested users. The problem is, this list is usually filled with either celebrities or Twitter “power users”. These accounts can often be amongst the most active and busy as far as content goes – how can that be a good introduction when you’ve just joined? Instead, why not work with something like Twellow, ask a couple of simple questions and use these keywords to offer suggestions that actually make sense? So, people in your locality, industry, interest zones, etc, and ease new users into the system as opposed to scaring them off with hyper feeds to follow.
These are just some options that Twitter could take to make the experience better. They’re nothing major, yet they could possibly make a big difference (at least from a user-friendliness viewpoint).
How about you – how would you make Twitter more sticky?
photo credit: Dustin Diaz
18 Responses to “Making Twitter Sticky”
Great points. I went through the trouble of creating a new twitter account to re-experience the life of a newbie. It absolutely stinks.
Funnily enough, that's exactly what I did while writing this post, and if I hadn't been using Twitter for so long, now, it'd scare me off too. Real scope for improvement.
@Matt Leonard – Now Twitter gets to count your bad newbie experience account as a new user! They seem not to care about the actual experience but more about having the raw numbers that will pump the valuation and the wallets of those on the inside.
Hi Danny, great post! I think the reason Twitter is so hard is because people are not used to having to search for and find their own 3rd party apps. They don't even know what a 3rd party app is. If they just had developers join them on their official platform, as (forgive me for the comparison) Facebook does, it would help people feel like it wasn't some thing they aren't cool enough figure out. And set people up with some basic apps automatically. It would also help if things like twtpic actually showed not a link but the actual image.
The thing is, nearly everything I can think of that would help John and Jane Public with Twitter would make it simpler to understand and more like facebook. Their interface is just more inviting to the masses. Twitter is catering to a huge market segment, like people with jobs. But “the masses” shouldn't be their target market.
There is a stigma among non-Twitter users that the service is used to tell other people what they are doing. The response is, “I don't want to tell people what I'm doing nor do I care what other people do.” But people join, see the question, “What are you doing?” and answer the question and are unsatisfied at results.
If management wants to keep Twitter sticky, change the “What are you doing?” prompt to “What is on your mind?” or something less specific.
Good question though I find it hard to know what the answer is – from my own experience and seeing many others trying it, it really is something that takes time to fathom and then enjoy.
I think Ari's point about the prompt question is a good one – something to signify it's a place you can exchange thoughts, ideas and conversation, rather than a place for you to tell the world what you're up to (unless you really want to)
I would like to be able to organize my followers into groups and then – most importantly – direct my tweets to the followers who I know would be interested. Instead we now have to either spamtweet every follower on every subject or create multiple profiles to cater different topics.
Also as a scandinavian, I have to decide which language to force onto my danish, icelandic, swedish and english followers instead of translating and tweeting in more appropriate/accessible tongues.
If another platform (Facebook) finds a way to facilitate this need first, I might even drop Twitter all together.
Danny – an EXCELLENT post sir. I wish I'd written it.
Twitter are missing so many of the things that are hurting the service, and tweaking elements that are far less problematic.
The SUL is a joke. Mr Tweet offers a far better service, based on user feedback. Twitter's SUL is based on who 'they' happen to like.
Great post! I completely agree with the spam issue! My son recently signed up for an account and without knowing better “opted in” to follow the suggested users. There wasn't a single one who's content would be relevant or even remotely interesting to him! No wonder people sign up and then say “I don't get it! Nobody is talking about anything important or interesting!”
Unfortunately most people won't read a user guide. Maybe a few “daily tip” tweets would be helpful though!I think that's one of the biggest issues as well, Shannon, like you mention. Many of the third-party apps offer conflicting features – for instance, Tweetgrid shows you uploaded images in the stream, while most others don't. If there was some kind of standard for all the basic features, that would be a start.
That's a great idea, Ari. I think Twitter has probably made it too open, and while that's great long-term, a sandbox approach might be better to begin with. And hopefully dull the “who cares” feeling that many potential users have.
A global translator would make perfect sense, Hakon – it's not as if Twitter is merely for people where English is the first language.
There are third-party apps like Seesmic Desktop that allow you to “reply all” – then you could drop out those you don't want to send a message to, But, you still need to set that up, and I think that's different from the approach you're on about. Definite room for ideas to come out.
Cheers Jim – and yes, Mr Tweet is a far superior alternative. Why Twitter can't just pony up with some of the third-party guys and offer better solutions I don't know – seems the better option all round.
That's the biggest missed opportunity, I feel, Heather. If Twitter made signing up a pleasure as opposed to a chore, and then helped new users settle in (as you say, some intro tweets for instance), it could be a much smoother experience and one that would keep more hanging around longer.
LOL, standards for Twitter! If only! You realize that the intensely tech set would be yelling about stifling innovation right? I read one article on your mashable link where a commenter was saying why don't people actually learn something for once. Pretty harsh. Facebook is easy and intuitive. Most people like their software spoonfed to them. Once you get into it you start to find the process of constantly finding new twitter apps cool but at the same time how much of a drain to productivity is that? Even if Twitter copied and pasted Facebook's interface (pretending lawsuits didn't exist) and started including the best apps in their platform, they would still be a different animal from Facebook, largely b/c of search. It's unfortunate that so much of both companies identities are shaped around what the other is doing because the comparison is always on everyone's minds.
Great post, Danny.
Totally agree, Danny. Have long been a proponent of keeping the infrastructure of Twitter simple, they're going to ruin the RT, no chance to add comment or spin to it, that's half the fun!
A good user's guide and more relevant suggested users would make a world of difference to those new to Twitter. They don't need to reinvent the wheel, just show people how to use it.