#RIPTwitter?

Can @Jack make Twitter more engaging or is it #RIPTwitter?

While the reports of Twitter’s death have been greatly exaggerated; this February, Twitter is getting no love.

CEO, Jack Dorsey, is being pressured by stock traders to grow monthly active users and keep them engaged longer.  

IMHO, Twitter’s recent Shareholder Letter was promising:

• $710 million in Q4, up 48% YoY
• $2.2 billion in 2015, up 58%
• advertisers up 90%
• revenue from advertising, data licensing, U.S., international all up!  

Twitter also added:

• native video
• launched Periscope live streaming video
• expanded direct messaging
• Google, Doubleclick ad bidding integration
• self-service for advertising
•  Moments for keeping up with trending stories as they happen    

This is all goodness; but I’m a glass half full, product guy; Wall Street, not so much.  What has the bankers/gamblers spooked?  two metrics:

1. Monthly Active Users, MAUs, in Q4: 320 million, up just 9%

2. User engagement, measured as percent daily logins: 38%

This is not a financial blog; short term stock price is not of concern to me, but it does present an interesting product design problem.  So let’s dig in!

How can Twitter increase users and keep them coming back, more often?  

Address users’ biggest complaints, I mean, not rocket science.  Home is where the heart is; let’s focus on how they can fix these issues with updates to Twitter Home Page. 

Complaint #1, “Twitter is too confusing.”

To the uninitiated, Twitter can be drinking from a firehose: too much information, all at once overwhelming, quickly streaming past.  

Give users more control of their feed, make it easier to find information.

The Home Feed should be more like Twitter Search, clean and well organized; it gives users control to find information, make refinements, even save searches.  Breaking Twitter users into Hunters and Gatherers, the Hunters have Twitter Search, the Gatherers have been neglected.  Updating the Home Feed algorithm to copy Facebook’s little known “Top Stories” or “Most Recent” News Feed options is a good start, but should be further developed; give users more control of their feed.  

View fullsize

Twitter Home Mobile updated.

As a Gatherer I want different ways to filter my feed, shape it based on my interests at any moment.  This would give Twitter a “remote control” so I could change “channels.”  So in addition to “Most Recent” feed I should be able to shape my Home Feed by:

• Most Popular - similar to Facebook’s “Top Stories” this re-orders my feed based on popularity algorithm within my personal Twittersphere 
• Most Relevant - of the Tweets in my feed, based on my interests, tweets I like, topics I tweet about, #hashtags I mention, places where I tweet...
• Photos - most recent and most popular images from all of Twitter, not just my feed; make it beautiful! 
• News - display most recent news related tweets; this could rival Google News.  The Hunters already have this in Twitter Search, let’s give it to the Gatherers as well.  
• Near Me - nearby tweets; to see what’s happening around me 
• Top Tweeters - show me the tweets from the most popular Twitter star accounts   

View fullsize

Twitter Home Feed with "clicker" for choosing channel, giving control to users. 

View fullsize

View fullsize

Complaint #2, “I can’t express myself with 140 characters.”

I’m a purest, I like the 140 character limit, but if going bigger will expand the audience and increase user engagement then, let’s do this!  But please, show some decorum, keep it civilized.  If this turns my feed into a messy list of diatribes? I’m out!

View fullsize

Twitter Home Feed ("clicker" set to Relevant) showing an Expandable Tweet

View fullsize

Expanded 10K tweet, with liberties

Keep the visible portion of tweets 140 characters, with an option to expand for more.  If 10,000 characters is the magic number, also used for Twitter Direct Messages, then let the 140 character tweet be the head with an option to extend to 10,000 as the tail.  Ten thousand character tweets, #10Ktweets, will give more room for expression; could result in deeper engagement; but may even be an affront to Twitter founder, Ev Williams, and his startup, Medium, a site for longer form posts; more Twitter drama?!      

Complaint #3, “I have no voice on Twitter.”   

Sure, Twitter has been a lightening rod for enacting large scale social change, see The Arab Spring, but it falls short for regular people trying to be heard over the “din” of tweets.  So if I want to ask Donald Trump: 

“@realDonaldTrump EXACTLY how do you plan to make Mexico pay for your wall?” 

If my question gains popularity it should make it’s way to his excellence, The Don.  Likes, sorry, ‘“loves” should be used to promote tweets (especially questions) to the @mentioned people, companies, organizations.  So if my tweet to @realDonaldTrump was well loved, voted up, it would eventually bubble up in his Twitter Feed.  This feature brings with it the promise that anyone could challenge public figures, raise awareness, exact change through use of crowd wisdom to democratize the public Twitter Feed.  

Sure, there are other issues to address like safety and privacy, but they’re less linked to user growth and engagement; this is a focused, quick-hit blog, so maybe some other time.  And, yes, there are other ways to grow users and keep them engaged, like live streaming video; but we’ve already covered that, twice, check back, we may cover these again soon.

BOTTOM LINE

With some well crafted product enhancements to the Home page, Twitter could be more engaging, less confusing, and more interactive.  With a solid Q4 finishing out a good year, Jack and the team should be able to grow users and keep them engaged; and start the #RIPTwitter hashtag trending downward.

---

24 FEB 2016

Update

Twitter agrees with me that it's time to redesign Twitter Home.  They have a job posting; are you up for it?  Or they could just use this blog and be done with it.  ; )

Meerkat's Feeling Lucky

Can Meerkat keep its lead over Twitter’s Periscope? If they keep innovating with addictive features like “Random Meerkat,” it’ll soon be down Periscope.

This year, the real March Madness was with Livestreaming Video; Meerkat, and soon after, Twitter’s Periscope both launched apps in the same month; and it’s been “game on.”  While Periscope launched a cleaner, more polished app; performance has been spotty and the jury is still out.  @mashable did a side-by-side comparison and Periscope couldn’t keep pace with Meerkat.  On the other hand, there have been more users on Periscope, like @amandaoleander who for not being a celebrity, regularly has 250+ live followers on her streams.       

If Livestream Video is going to last beyond initial novelty; these apps must focus on supporting user growth with content discovery and sharing.  We’ll take a closer look at both, this time Meerkat, and then Periscope.  So far Meerkat has the most addictive new feature:  the “Boring? Random Meerkat!” button.

DISCOVER USE CASE

“Boring? Random Meerkat?” button is addicting, it’s like chatroulette without the broadcaster staring back at you.  It’s great for discovering new Meerkats to watch and follow.   It’s so addicting it should be promoted from just the Meerkat portal page to integrated into the core mobile app; by owning this feature with the dice icon, which selects a Meerkat at random:

Slightly Updated Meerkat Player with "Random Meerkat" Dice

I couldn't help cleaning up the top and bottom navigation bars, but refrained from a complete overhaul.  Oh, and the algorithm should be updated to weight randomness away from streams with say only one follower after five minutes - next!  

Browser Plugin which launches the Meerkat portal page and alerts of streams going live is awesome and distracting and greatly contributed to the delay of this blog, ha!

The plugin opens the Meerkat Portal - an easy way to watch from a desktop browser.

Meerkat Portal, Launched from Meerkat Plugin, Displaying the "Boring? Random Meerkat!" 

SHARE USE CASE

Since being kicked from Twitter's social graph, Meerkat must rely on share features to grow - aside from blowing a huge marketing budget, but where's the skill in that?  In the meantime, they've been busy adding features to support sharing:

Follow URL for linking people to your Meerkat page, like this, simple but effective.

Follow button links to your follow URL and is added to sites using the provided code snippet.

Share Your Profile button blasts out your Share URL to your Twitter followers.  This is a great thought, but is buried at the bottom of the home Meerkat List and would be better on a My Profile page.

Hold To Share, upcoming streams will open your iPhone share dialog:

This is a good start but should be extended to include live streams as well; that’s sharing live streams beyond just a retweet to your Twitter followers.

Basic Share allows broadcasters to notifying Twitter followers of livestreams, end these Twitter notifications with #meerkat and viewers to retweet a livestream video; boring but absolutely necessary.    

BIG IDEA, WISH LIST

Once the core Growth and Share use cases have been addressed, I’m looking forward to Meerkat and Periscope focusing more on deeper engagement, such as:   

1. Voice messages back to the broadcaster, who would select voice messages to be played during the livestream; and restart the fun of call-in radio shows of yesteryear.  loveline much?  

2. Apple TV Channel, let’s not be coy, we know it’s coming, just cut to the chase.

3. Search, while not earth-shattering, it’s a basic requirement for discovering content.

4. Playlists as some way to organize upcoming or active stream content would help make some sense of this never-ending list.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Meerkat has been busy adding a myriad of ways to support Discover and Share Use Cases out of necessity since being kicked from the Twitter social graph. While Periscope can rest on the laurels of Twitter for organic growth amongst users, Meerkat must continue to scrap and innovate to grow.  Does this smell of Twitter being anticompetitive? add your thoughts to the comments section.  Will this result in Periscope complacency or afford them to focus on higher level Engagement Use Cases?  Either way, it’s still the first quarter of a showdown that will be both entertaining and live streaming.