Some features that would really make Twitter better
If you don’t know what Twitter is, then please do go here.
I have started using Twitter a little more in the past couple of months, and I am liking it more and more (consequently, I have reduced blogging a little, but more about that in a different post). Below is a chart which shows my tweeting pattern since I joined – yup, signed up a long time ago, but only adopted recently:
Having started using Twitter a lot, I realize that there are a lot of features that Twitter can improve upon. I suppose that is the main reason for why there are so many applications out there which have been built using the Twitter API, but some of the features that I would like to see are related to the core Twitter offering. Here is what I would like to see in Twitter:
Opt-in Indexing of Tweets – what this means is that I should be able to choose whether I want search engines and other aggregators to index my tweets or not. In fact, I should even be able to choose whether my tweets should show up in Twitter search or not. Currently, everything I tweet is indexed by search engines, and of course also by Twitter. It is much like what WordPress.com gives you – the option to whether you want your blog posts to be searchable on search engines.
Some people might say that if I want that, then I should just protect my updates. But that is not what I want. I do want other users on Twitter to be able to follow me and I do want my updates to appear on the Public Timeline. I just want to prevent them from being indexed, that is all.
Original Trending Topic Tweets – this one is really close to my heart – every time I see a Trending Topic and click on it, all I see is trash tweets. Let me explain. The moment a topic becomes trending two things happen: spammers move in and start using the trending topic to spew spam; people start using the trending topic keywords as part of their tweets because those words are… trendy.
Not too many people are tweeting about the original cause of why the topic became trendy (though this varies from topic to topic). This usually is the number one reason on why I don’t use the Trending Topics feature at all.
What I would like to see are the tweets which caused the topic to become trending. The original hundred (or thousand) tweets which came out and defined a trending topic. At least this way, I would be able to see real discussion about a topic.
Filtered Trending Topics – based on the screenshot released by TechCrunch of the Twitter admin hack, it is clear that Twitter is tracking more than just 10 trending topics. I think it should let me block out certain topics from the top 10 list, and then fill out the the available slot with some other topic that is trending.
This feature would allow me to only see topics that I am interested in.
User Rating – there really needs to be some sort of rating system in place. And it should then be used in Public Timelines, Search Results (or trending topics), etc. to sort, hide/show tweets.
For example, if someone has been rated really low by fellow Twitter users (spam bots will fall in this category), then I shouldn’t see their Tweets when I click on a Trending topic. This would clean it up so much.
Well, there are many other things that Twitter can do to improve, but the ones above are my top choices (wish list items).
What would you like to see in Twitter that is not there?
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July 21st, 2009 at 7:30 am
I agree on the User Ratings 100%. Having at least the means to say “Thumbs Up,” “Thumbs Down” would be very helpful in identifying things that others found interesting. You don’t directly mention whether you are for star ratings, but I would not be in favor of that (especially since Tweets are kind of like Youtube comments in brevity).
July 21st, 2009 at 10:38 am
Gustavo, I actually meant rating users and not tweets themselves. I think the RT mechanism is perfect for telling your followers what is interesting and what is not.
But, when people rate users, then we can collectively clear out all spam/bot activity from public timelines, search, and trending topics (search again).
July 22nd, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Right on. That makes sense. Let’s lobby for Twitter to do it!