What Twitter Can Still Be.

I’ve had this post in my head for 2 years. However, in the spirit of Jack’s call for ideas, Anil’s response, and the fact I have to write 3 posts per week this year or get fined, here is my #Twitter2017 feedback for Jack Dorsey.

According to documents leaked in 2009, the goal of Twitter was (is?) to be the pulse of the planet. I think they came quite close in achieving that, but the pesky thing called “monetization” may have caused a bit of distraction.

The enter basis for my recommendations is based on the assumption the goal of Twitter still remains being the pulse of the planet.

A fundamental problem with Twitter the product is that they built a communication protocol for the “social age” and after it got traction, decided to create ONE single way for people to use that communication protocol.

For a second, imagine that Microsoft built the email protocol; awon IMAP, SMTP and POP and after a few years, decided the only way to use email would be to use Outlook. No MailChimp, no GMail, no Sendgrid. If you want to communicate using IMAP etc, you must use your Outlook.

Deciding that there should be only one way people can and should use Twitter is the biggest issue with Twitter. Lurker? Bot? Tweet Chatter? Tweet Stormer? Picture Publisher? An App? DM Slider? 10 million followers? 1 follower? it doesn’t matter. You are compelled to use the same app.

That to me is a fundamental problem with Twitter.

Moving Forward

I think the solution to Twitter moving past its stagnating growth is for it to refocusing on it being the backbone of social interactions of people, things and people with things.

This can be achieved by liberalizing their APIs so people can build ANYTHING as long as everything created is put back into the giant hose.

A client for anyone.

Using Twitter for Navigating pictures? There’s a Twitter Client for that

Prefer to follow lists rather than people? There’s a client for it.

Use Twitter “normally”? No biggie. There’s another for that.