Twitter is a product that is used and loved by hundreds of millions of users. The core product has needed the same basic features for the last 7 or 8 years. Here are the things I think Twitter should build. In this post, I stay away from areas I no longer understand for Twitter (e.g. zero rated Twitter / developing world products) or big picture ideas (e.g. how to remake the timeline). Even simple changes could go a long way for the product.
1. Tweet structure.
Long form content. A key rule in product design is if your users keep wanting to do something, let them do it. Tweet storms are clear examples of users wanting to write longer form content on Twitter.
The simplest approach to longer form content would be to allow the linking of tweets as a formal product feature and structure a la tweet storms.
It is clear users want standard longer form content as well. Twitter users will often screenshot a longer post written in e.g. iPhone notes app, and then post the image as their tweet. Obviously this content is now not searchable on Twitter. A simple, blog-like longer form editor may be a solid approach to capture this behavior on Twitter. This may include having the Tweet as the headline for a longer post, or a pull quote. Either way, being able to write a longer piece is one use case the Twitter userbase keeps trying to do.
The actual 140 character nature of Tweets does not need to change in your stream as part of this. E.g. everything could be a standard tweet with the ability to expand to see more inline.
A standard design approach is to get out of the way of your users. Just as Twitter eventually added @ mentions and replies, they should get out of their own way and add long form content. There is clear user demand.
Editable tweets. You should be able to go back and edit a tweet. A simple affordance would be the ability to switch to prior versions of the tweet / tweet history. Lots of wikis, Google docs, and other products have simple ways to reveal this.
2. Content controls.
Muting content areas. I don't care about certain sports but get deluged in my Twitter feed during game time. I should be able to keep following people but turn off specific topics. I would love to take a break from "political Twitter" and turn off politics for a few days. Twitter has the machine learning chops to build a feature like this.
Blocking people. There are classes of hyper aggressive people on Twitter who all attack someone in concert. There should be bulk controls for this. Twitter also has the odd feature that if you block someone, they are notified about it. It is unclear why you need to let someone know if they are blocked. It is the social networking equivalent of giving someone the finger. Twitter can make its platform a much nicer place to exist.
SPAM and fake users. It looks like Twitter is finally working on this feature in earnest. I have instances where I have been followed by 10 new people and 8 of them look like fake users to me. If I can tell a user is fake, a machine learning algorithm should do it even better. Fake users should be automatically removed from the platform.
3. Growth and re-engagement.
Email digest a la Nuzzel. Nuzzel is a news/social content digest that really works. Every day I read 80% of the links that Nuzzel sends me based on my Twitter feeed. Twitter's email digest is largely untargeted and therefore is largely ignored.
Twitter could re-engage me by upping the quality of their email digest, thereby pulling me back to the product daily. Alternatively, they could push me the same content via a notification, or into my Twitter feed. If a Nuzzel-like page were added within Twitter itself I would go there with some frequency. Being able to vote up and down links on such a page could create a distributed / personalized Reddit like experience. Maybe this could replace the "moments" tab?
Overall Twitter is a product whose useful core has evolved only slightly in the last few years. My hope is that some day the above features get added. This should increase utilization, engagement, and growth on a product percentages of humanity use and love daily.
Thanks to David King for comments on this post.
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